Visiting Leo

Yesterday Brucio, Sloane and I drove up to Ponoka to visit Leo. He was transferred up to the province's main brain injury centre there about two months ago, and it was my first visit to see him since he'd left Calgary.

Overall Leo's doing well and was in great spirits the whole time we were there, chuckling and joking around. He's able to stretch his right arm out, and he can move his right leg around a bit. For sure his speech has improved amazingly from when he was here in the city - he and Bruce were yukking it up about arranging for some hookey from therapy classes so Leo could watch the masters' cup this week on TSN (soccer) and he was right in there.

He does end up searching for words and losing the thread of the conversation sometimes, but he said he can watch and follow a whole movie now, something he wasn't able to do at Christmastime. And he remembers that Sloane is in the world, but can't remember her name unless we prompt him, and forgets whether she's a girl or a boy. He remembered Rooney, and that he was orange, and was sorry the coyotes got him.


On a tour of the facility, Leo is self-propelled (using his left leg).



In the common area outside his room - Leo's looking great.

Leo will likely be at Ponoka for another 8 - 10 months. Basically it's boot camp for his brain, hardcore therapies of all kinds to get him to the highest level of functioning possible before he's discharged. Go Leo go!

Categories: Family

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Mr. Vicious Goes To The Cat Show... In Spirit

When Rooney died I was so sad. So so so sad. It's only been a week and a half - I still feel super sad about it. And when we found him on the hill one of the first things that came to mind was, Oh my god, I have to shoot the cat show next weekend.

The Mr. Vicious Goes To The Cat Show feature in Swerve (published December 2006) had gotten amazing reviews. We heard from people all over the country and down into the US. There was something about the story that just struck a chord with anyone who had ever owned a cat, I guess. So here I was, getting set to cash in on the notoriety and fame Rooney and the article earned last year.

Yes folks, I'd been brought in to be the show photographer for the Spring SACCF (Southern Alberta Cat Fanciers) show. I was to have a booth. I was going to do cat photos and pictures of cats and their owners. Document the show hall and ring competitions and generally hang around with the people Rooney and I had first met last October at the fall show. Although I wasn't going to bring him to the show (as mentioned in the article, Rooney HATED the cat show with all his might), I was destined to spend two twelve-hour days answering questions and talking about Rooney. And suddenly, he was dead and I was grieving my dead cat, but scheduled to be surrounded by cats and their owners in only a few days. I didn't know what to do.

So I did a lot of crying and Turner rubbed my back day and night until his hands were going to fall off. By about Tuesday I felt I was almost ready to face the cat show world, if only just to fulfill the promise I'd made to do it. Then I lost my shooting partner (pregnant and feeling first-trimesterish, she wasn't up to the rigour needed for a cat show weekend). I suddenly had to hire someone else. Enter Craigslist and Kijiji and my first-ever advertisements on same. In case you live in a cave (with internet access), these sites are online classifieds communities. Fast, efficient, and best of all FREE, they're kicking the pants of newspaper classifieds sections from coast to coast to coast. I put up little "want to be the second shooter on my weekend gig?" ads and spent the rest of last week interviewing the many many many budding photographers out there in Calgaryland. Hired the gal that, even from the first email, seemed like the one for the job, Erin.

The show was hilarious as always, fascinating, and great fun. I got there at 7am on Saturday morning to get ready, with Erin arriving soon afterward. We set up the studio (a converted hockey dressing room that smelled distinctly like teenage boy armpit) and the booth in the show hall, festooned with little white xmas lights and copies of the Swerve bearing Rooney's fine chop-licky mug. We made signs, we put fliers advertising the photography booth on everyone's "bench". When exhibitors began to fill the show hall, we ran around taking photos of people and their cats and their carriers and cat accoutrements, and reminded them about the photography booth. Rooney's breeder came to the show all the way from Sooke, BC and when I went over to visit her I ended up crying in her arms over my dead cat. I think I snotted on her shoulder by accident but she was very nice about everything.

Now, you should know that I made a capital investment in the cat show. I bought backdrops, I made photocopies, I rented equipment. As mentioned earlier, I hired staff. All tolled I probably made an outlay of about $300. When it came to prices, I'd done a lot of investigation. I'd spoken to a number of cat photographers, mostly in the US, including the famous and very highly regarded Helmi Flick. (Her number is unlisted but with a bit of internet sleuthing I found it and called her direct, reaching her at home.) Taking their prices and then dropping them a little, with Helmi's guidance I decided to charge $50 per session (per cat), which would include six 4x6 prints or two 8x10 prints. For an additional $50 people could have the whole session (20 - 30 shots) on cd. I was told that virtually everyone buys the session AND the cd, and that they'd be happy to pay $100 for the privilege. A bargain at twice the price, said various pet photographers.

So my $300 outlay could be made back in 3 - 6 clients. With 160 cats being shown at this show, there would be at least 40 owners and their partners in attendance. I thought it was completely reasonable to assume that, say, 25% of them would want to have their cats' photos taken. Again, I was basing my numbers on what other photographers said I should expect. I thought I was going to be run off my feet, and expected to book at least twenty cats. Twenty times $50 is a thousand dollars. This was the very least I expected to make.

We don't know what happened. People loved the photos we were taking around the hall (which Erin cleverly rigged up into a slideshow at the booth). Many folks recognized me from the last show and got to chatting. Lots of them thought they'd probably want photos taken, but "not right now". I could understand - it was the first day of the last show of the show season. People were fluffing and primping and trimming and generally manhandling their cats to within an inch of their pedigreed lives. So we were patient, and smiled and were friendly, and took awesome photos around the hall, and generally represented ourselves well.

But by about 2pm it started to become clear: nobody was going to get their pictures taken. Even the executive, the people who'd recruited me and who all had cats in the show, not ONE of them came. Repeated announcements went out over the loudspeakers about the photography. People smiled and waved and yet nobody came. The people who had pre-booked with me over email didn't come. When I chased them down at their benches they said they'd changed their minds. We just didn't get it. By 6pm we were exhausted. I paid Erin a kill fee of $50 and we went home.

That night I talked everything over with Turner and he brought the full weight of his 1.5 years in Commerce to bear on the situation. My reputation? Fine. My service? Proven. My booth? A little out-of-the-way in the show hall perhaps, but it's a hockey rink; nothing's very far from anything. We had to come to the conclusion that the problem was either a) the prices, or b) another x factor about which I had no knowledge and over which I had no control. So it came down to a) the prices. I decided to slash the prices.

So with head held high I strode into the hall early Sunday morning. I wrote a big notice on the booth price sheet: END OF SEASON SALE! PRICES SLASHED! ASK ME ABOUT TODAY'S DISCOUNTS! Turner had counselled me on the power of the x.99. As in, $20 sounds like too much, but $19.99 is a bargain. $19.99 it was. I also conceded that providing prints were cutting into my profit margin (though 25% of $0 on Saturday is exactly as much "zipperoo" as you suspect it is), so the $19.99 would include the images on cd. No prints. Get them made yourself. COME ON DOWN YOU LUCKY PEOPLE!

I think I was also benefitting from it being the last day of the show, but Sunday picked up right around lunchtime. We booked six clients. We sold a bunch of our show hall images on cd to the public visiting the cat show. We did bench photos with some girls who didn't like studio shots. Overall we pulled in $190. At the end of the day I paid Erin another $50, we resolved to work together again soon, and we went our seperate ways.

So let's do the math, shall we? $190 gross profit. Minus $100 for Erin, equals $90. Minus $300 in capital costs, equals -$210. Financially the notion of working the cat show was a big raspberry.

BUT! We loved the shoots we did: tons of fun and awesome clients. The cats were amazingly cooperative, given the dark room plus two giant blinding flashes and teenage-boy-armpit smell. And best of all, it was very cathartic to be around so many cat lovers, and get to meet other Abyssinians that looked just like Rooney did, and receive so many compliments on the Mr. Vicious story, and so many hugs and kind words about losing Rooney last week. I don't think I would have sought out a generic-style such catharsis in the yellow pages if it had a $210 pricetag, but as they say in the business when you've just lost a bunch of money but had a good time, "It was good EXPERIENCE". Yes. Good experience!


There's no place like home... there's no place like home... there's no place like home...

You can see some of the studio shots I did on Sunday, here.

Categories: Rooney | Work work work

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Mr. Vicious Goes To The Rainbow Bridge

Rooney died about ten days ago. He got out when there was a film crew at our house weekend before last, interviewing Turner for a climate change movie. We didn't notice that he was missing before we went to bed - usually he comes to sleep with us in the middle of the night, but not when we first retire. I woke up the next morning, early, with the terrible feeling Rooney wasn't in the house. Packed up Sloane and T, and armed with a box of paper clips to shake, we walked the community calling his name.

He'd been caught by coyotes. We found him on the hill near our house.



That's Rooney (what was left of him), the orange thing just up the hill from the stroller.

We buried him in the yard. I have this feeling that you're not allowed to bury animals in your yard. But it felt like the right thing to do, and the only thing to do. So animal control bylaw officers can come and fine me if they like, but I really felt like I had to bring him home, and bury him here.


Rooney's shoe box coffin contained some cat food, litter and a few poos (so he'd know where to go), some ham, a tinfoil ball we'd been throwing for him the day before, some water from the bathroom tap, some leaves of the two plants he liked to eat, and his beloved paper clips. Before we put it in the ground it also contained Rooney. He was torn in half, and all the middle parts were eaten and gone.

Rooney was a great cat. He had friends and fans far and wide. He achieved much in his short 20 months on earth and was dearly loved here at Chez Bristowe Turner. We miss him very much. As Sloaner has said many times since he died, "Rooney was a good cat." He was.

Categories: Rooney

Comments [8]

This Just In From Turner

We've been busy - I'm working on a December-to-now mini compilation of what we've been up to. But first, a taste of the humdrum everyday love n' stoopidnesses here at Chez Bristowe Turner:

This morning Turner sent me an interac money transfer over email (he has the Canada Council money in his account, but I pay the bills). When you deposit a transfer in your account online you send a little "got it" message back to the sender as a confirmation. Today mine was, "Thx. Love you. A"

We've had a hard morning around here. Schizophrenic-toddler-type morning. The cat-peed-on-my-mitts-and-hat-type morning. Administrator-at-the-new-daycare-keeps-giving-me-dirty-looks-type of morning. Not the most loving of mornings, is what I'm saying. So it was with willed effort and a deep breath that I put that love into the interac money transfer confirmation email and hit "send".

This is what I got back from Turner, who hasn't had the grandest morning, himself:

From:	"Chris Turner"
Subject:	And you
To:	"Ashley Bristowe "

Love you too. -- love T

(It occurs to me there's some sociology grad student
working on a modern communications PhD thesis as we
speak who'd say that communicating via Interac email
money transfer messages and webmail with your spouse
when you're within earshot of each other is somehow
indicative of some postmodern what-have-you and maybe
even devolutionary or something, but fuck it - that's
why we left academia. They can tell you what it is but
not how it is. Something. -- love T)

And that's how you keep a marriage going. Blessed be.

Categories: Married Life

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