So, I’ve been putting off writing this post for exactly one year today.  In the fall of 2013 we got some bad news about our cat Pepsi.  They’d found a lump that turned out to be cancer and the operation to remove it was unsuccessful.  The mass had grown too large and entwined in his abdomen to take out.

We embarked on a fairly aggressive schedule of chemotherapy for him (yes, they do that for cats too!) and he responded remarkably well to the treatments.  Danni doted on him day and night hand feeding him to make sure he kept his strength up, and her efforts resulted in him gaining over a kilo while undergoing his chemo.  Our vet was amazed at his recovery and how fast his lump was shrinking, and it wouldn’t have been possible without such incredible, round-the-clock care from my wife (and a touch of help from this).

Unfortunately, after 6 months of excellent progress his cancer came out of remission and we had to say goodbye to Pepsi on May 15th, 2014.  I don’t want to talk at length about that day, but our vet came to our house and I got to sit on our bed in the sunshine and hold on to my best friend of the past 17 years while he peacefully slipped away.

Even now, a full year later I’m writing this with tears welling.

I’ve always thought of people so overly attached to their pets as a bit off, so if you’re reading this and not much of a pet lover allow me to try to explain where some of that attachment comes from.

For the entirety of my adult life, this “cat” has been my singular constant.  He joined my family shortly before I moved away from my home town for the first time to go away to college.  He’s been with me for every single move I’ve done spanning 5 cities, 3 countries and 2 continents.  He’s been there for every new job, ridden in every vehicle I’ve owned, met every girl I ever dated from my first real girlfriend all the way to my wife.  He was with me in every 4-plex, duplex, apartment, house and flat I’ve rented and he was with us when we celebrated purchasing our first home.

Every time I came home miserable from a bad day at work or arrived through the door elated to be back at the end of a long holiday, he would run to greet me with his quiet, chirpy meows and happy head-butts.  After the better part of 2 decades, not having him around now has left this perfect, cat sized hole in my life.

We’ve talked about getting a new furry friend, and we likely will someday.  We’re just not quite ready for that yet.  Part of me writing this has been a bit of a cathartic exercise to get these thoughts out of my head so I can let go of them, and while it’s taken several hours to write this short post I feel like it’s helped.

I think one of the big reasons I haven’t updated this site in so long was because I knew I had to write this post.  Hopefully now that I’ve managed to do this I can start paying some more attention to this site again!

We won’t ever really say farewell to our little man, and we miss him every day.

After an afternoon at HyperJapan and not taking many photos, I was itching to use all this camera equipment I’d unpacked.  Fortunately, Danni was all done up in a cute outfit and willing to be my lovely model.

It was the nicest day so far this year so we opened up the patio to take advantage of the cherry blossoms erupting from the trees in the park.  Our patio worked out to be the perfect height to give us some lovely (if not a little busy) backdrops.

This is exactly the sort of thing I’ve been hoping to do more of this year, but haven’t really gotten around to doing.  We’ve been busy with house hunting and that, coupled with a pair of photo shoots I’ve had fall through I haven’t done nearly as much portrait photography as I’d like.

Thanks to my lovely wife for being such a good sport, and to Pepsi for always getting involved whenever the lights and cameras come out!  There’s a couple more images in the gallery.

In the ongoing effort to introduce new slices of culture into my life, Danni picked up a pair of tickets to see the ballet performance of Cinderella.  Having done years of ballet she’s an obvious fan and has talked about taking me for some time now.  I think choosing a familiar storyline was a good idea as I’m not artistically minded enough to extrapolate any meaning from interpretative dance (or any other subtle forms of expression for that matter).

As we were getting all done up for the evening, I thought I’d take a couple of quick photos of us looking shiny.

If you’re wondering whether or not I enjoyed myself, I did.  I would go again, but mostly due to knowing how much joy Danni gets from attending than for me.  Give me a hockey game any day!

I’ve just realized that this site has been up and running for the better part of a year now and managed to avoid photos of my cats somehow.  In order to rectify that, here are a few of the boys and an album is set up here.