After Phoebe's brother Joey was put down I was devastated, and wanted a new cat to distract me from thoughts of him dying in my arms. My boyfriend Jeff and I were at PetSmart one day and we saw this gorgeous black cat in their adoption centre. She reminded me so much of Persia (a cat Jeff and I had that passed away unexpectedly a couple years earlier). The Humane Society had named her Mimin. We went home and I could not stop thinking about her. We went back the next day and brought her home. That was June 2007. She sleeps in my legs every single night, circles me while rubbing against my legs every time I do dishes, and she has to sit or lay on something...ANYTHING (ie. piece of paper, placemat, my laptop, modem box - see last photo). She is my little princess, very thin and regal looking. If I thought she could deal, I'd make her wear a diamong studded collar. Being solid black, she is VERY difficult to photograph. The first photo below was taken a couple hours after bringing her home for the first time.

Those who follow my Flickr stream will remember the leather African chair a coworker gave me a few months ago. It is made of leather and wooden dowels and had a few issues - the stitching on part of the seat had come undone and the dowels needed to be glued so the chair didn't collapse. I took the leather piece from the seat to an upholsterer and for $20 she re-stitched it and last night my boyfriend glued the dowels all in place. I still need to buy some leather conditioner because it's VERY dry and I may oil the wood a bit. I'm quite pleased with it - it's MUCH better than the white painted rattan chair I had in it's place (since I'm going more for more of an ethnic/earthy/lodge look. As you'll see below, with the addition of a sheepskin rug it's already become a favourite hangout for the cats.

How I came across Frye boots I really don't recall. I only heard about them last week sometime - I think while perusing blogland. Once I googled them I became completely obsessed. I have wanted motorcycle boots for probably 15 years. I have never really seen any, or at least none I wanted to spend my money on. Until Frye came into my life. I have spent every evening since then scouring the internet trying to figure out how/where to get my hands on some. I debated about getting some on EBay but I really wanted to try them first to make sure I knew what size to get. After some extensive googling I found out that Holt Renfrew (the Canadian version of Saks) carries Frye. So this afternoon I snuck out of the office with my sidekick Val and we headed to Holts to see what Frye boots they carried. I should have known I would not be able to leave empty handed. Sure enough I came home with these:

They are so freaking cool I walked around the office to show my colleagues (who are all guys besides Val, that's how excited I was). I got one of them worried that his wife was going to see them on the blog and want some too. LOL. So now I own a brown pair of Frye Harness 12R boots. Now I'm on the hunt for a black pair of another model. I have several in mind....

In the summer of 2006 my boyfriend and I had 3 cats at the time (Milo, Cheeks and Lucky) and we decided to get another. One day at work I was looking through my department's classified ads online and found a woman who had 2 kittens that needed a home as she was about to take them to the Humane Society. I knew right away we had to go see these kittens, and I knew deep down that we would end up taking them both home with us. Sure enough we did. We named the kittens Phoebe and Joey. They were adorable together - they snuggled all the time (see photo #2) and groomed each other and Phoebe suckled on Joey constantly. A few months after we got them, Joey became very sick and we took him to the emergency vet. We were told he likely had FIP (an incurable and fatal disease) and we had to put him down that day. They were only about 6 months old at the time, which made his fate so gut-wrenching. Phoebe missed him so much, and started suckling on Cheeks and Lucky. Fortunately they obliged. She is still a big baby, and loves to cuddle with several of the other cats. She is very curious and LOVES to be tied up in the backyard on her harness. She has remained very small and looks like a kitten. She's very photogenic and I love capturing her on camera. (Check out her Flickr set here).

It was mid-October about 5 or 6 years ago when my boyfriend Jeff and I were driving through a small town outside Ottawa looking at houses. Jeff insisted on a pit stop on the side of the road because he couldn't hold it in anymore and walked into a forest for a little bit of privacy. A minute later he came out and as he got near the car, he stopped and turned back toward the forest. He walked back to the forest as he had thought he heard a strange noise and came out with this little black and white kitten, about 4 months old. We drove to a couple of homes nearby and either no one was home (it was Thanksgiving weekend) or no one knew the kitten. So we took him home and went back the following weekend and again, no one knew the kitten. So we kept him and named him Lucky. Suitable name I'd say as I doubt he would have made it through the winter. Lucky is quite a character, and he's Jo's favourite. He will walk around the house and howl (I don't know how else to describe the noise he makes), especially if I just yelled at him for bugging Cheeks. He LOVES to sleep on shoes, and on his back. He snores, and he's pretty hefty. That's Lucky in a nutshell. (Check out his Flickr set here).