Here’s Lost in the Captions 11 – a special episode, a much more personal and emotional one than I had planned and wanted. I know I haven’t been around on the server much lately, and I apologize. This will be the only video from me this weekend and for at least a few more days – there will be no Advanced Map Making Tutorial this week.

This episode is dedicated to Bertík, my furry friend and loyal companion who has been with me for almost half my life. He came to Sweden together with an ex-girlfriend of mine, then stayed behind when she left. He was always special – so cautious and afraid when he came here, he would always dash to the bookshelf and climb to the top with remarkable speed whenever the doorbell rang, to hide up there behind the loudspeakers.

With time he grew more secure and trusting, happy to be around any guests in the house. Every day when I came home from work, he would come running to the door to get picked up and held, clinging to my shoulder. Then once he got tired of being petted, he would climb up on my shoulder and walk around, surveying the world and seeing where he might be able to jump to.

He was getting old, and we knew he had kidney problems, but this last week he took a drastic turn for the worse. We took him to the veterinary hospital where the vets did what they could. Sadly there is no way even for modern medicine to repair a kidney that has stopped working, neither for man nor animal, and today Bertík passed away.

I miss him intensely, and I can’t focus on videos right now – for now, there needs to be time for me and my tears.