Thanks all of you for your kind words and thoughts. Mr B might be gone in the corporeal sense - but his spirit sure lives on - and some of his hair still haunts my darkroom. I also keep finding small pieces of film that he carried around upstairs. He would go in search of "trim" pieces when i was not there, chew on them and deposit them in various corners.
Ok, so we can leave a newspaper unattended and not come back and find it shredded, we can even leave a plastic bag on the table (though we still put them securely in drawers) and, yes, we can even have flowers. He considered ANY flower as a snack and would devour them in no times flat - leaving an empty flower pot with short, green stalks only.
Of course, I would trade all of these benefits for him back.