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.

It’s time for our annual batch of Christmas photos, this time in our new home!  We managed to find an excellent tree this year, and Netflix had an excellent ‘Fireplace movie’ that I played the hell out of.  Sad, I know.  But I put our space heater under the TV and it was almost like the real thing!

Mom had brought us some photo ball ornaments last year, so we used our family portrait from last year as a pretty good option.  The reverse was a photo of Pepsi of course.

Christmas morning and Pepsi was right in there looking for his gifts. We’re pretty lucky he’s still with us after his big surgery back in October and his on-going chemotherapy. He’s pretty tough for a cat well into his 17th year.

And here is this year’s family portrait. For the first time since our wedding it was just the two of us together for Christmas, so it was a nice, quiet evening and we dragged Pepsi into the photos this year.

Hope you all had a brilliant holidays! There are some more images in the gallery here.

Danni and I have been wanting to do a bit of a photo shoot in a nearby park with Danni in her ballet shoes.  We took a short bus ride (actually 2 bus rides as I realized after the first trip that my camera battery was dead) to Beddington Park to take advantage of some of the lovely scenery.

One of my favourite shots of the day.  It wasn’t a particularly complex setup, just a single flash with a shoot-through umbrella to Danni’s left.  It doesn’t take much to make her look good!

We did a couple of natural light images that turned out quite nicely as well.

It always amazes me that someone can look so graceful while balancing themselves on their tip-toes, but I think she certainly managed it here.  There are some more photos in the gallery as usual.

This has sort of become a tradition of sorts around our place.  Come to visit and we’re very likely going to Richmond Park.  I think we both just really love it there but need some sort of excuse to make the trip out.  Especially now as it’s a couple of bus rides away.

We had much more success finding the deer than we did at our last family outing.  The winter weather had killed off most of the shoulder-height ferns so there wasn’t anywhere for the deer to hide.  Well, apart from being somewhere in the vastness that is Richmond Park.  Fortunately we didn’t have to wait too long to find them, we just needed to be willing to get our shoes a bit muddy.  It has definitely rained this year!

I’ve been enough times now that I can act as a bit of a mini tour-guide, provided I can keep to the general middle area of the park.  We did a wide loop around the ponds and through as many of the treed in areas as we could.  I enjoy the wide open spaces as much as the next prairie raised lad, but the bitter winds had us seeking as much shelter as possible in order to prolong our hike.

All in all a very successful deer spotting sojourn.  I think mom was quite happy with the wildlife, which is saying something for someone who grew up in Vancouver with the Rocky Mountains on her doorstep.  There are a few more images in the gallery, but they’re mostly family images.  If you’re after more deer photos, I was at the park with gusto earlier in the year to get my fill of deer shots.

This post is mainly here as a showcase for the the amazing Christmas Goose that we cooked this year.  I don’t want to waste any time, so here it is!

Not to toot my own horn, but does that not look like it’s right out of a magazine?  We were all incredibly pleased with how it turned out, especially as most of us had never even eaten a goose let alone cooked one.  How did it taste?  Well, the flavour was really lovely with all of the citrus fruit and spices we rammed into it while cooking, but if I’m honest it was a bit dry.  And there isn’t much meat on one of these guys compared to a turkey.  The estimate was for 5-6 people with this goose, but only one of us had any leftovers the next day before it was all gone.

The sides didn’t turn out to terribly either.  I got my sweet potatoes smothered in marshmallows and I added enough bacon and butter to the brussels sprouts to make them palatable for everyone.  The ‘roasted potatoes’ where more like ‘soft boiled in goose fat’.  Not was I was aiming for, but if I were to write a cook book my secret for everything would be to soak it in goose fat. Instant deliciousness!

I’m making myself hungry again, so I’ll end on this photo of one of the cute new ornaments mom hauled over from the mother land.  There are a few more images of our Christmas day in the gallery!