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I had a post all ready and was putting it together in Blogger, when I noticed that today is October 31. Halloween. Because I am nothing if not swift of mind and it’s not like there’s been hints of impending pumpkin takeover in the last few days.

I’d like to use the weather as an excuse for my brainlessness – today, it’s 18 (64F) in Toronto. I am not wearing socks and plan to go read a book in the park in 5 minutes. On Halloween.

And as it is Halloween, Barb, my partner in crime in all things tenant associated has decorated the lobby.

Please notice the spiders. I’m not fond of spiders. Really not fond. However, after several years of exposure, I’ve become accustomed to the wee ones in the webs, but this year, she gleefully placed humongous (humungous?) ones right above the elevator. Then she added tarantulas. Very realistic tarantulas. I email her regularly with Spider Watches. I swear the brown one in the middle has moved down the wall. And on the same day I noticed another missing, I rode up in the elevator with a pest control guy. Coincidence? I think not! Barb laughs at me, claims I’m imagining things. I still sleep with one eye open.

Halloween is also the fluffball’s birthday.

She’s my wee familiar, found by Michele, who knew someone who didn’t want her and on a sunny day in February, brought home by Janne, who went into the house while I waited in the car and brought a tiny explosion of fur into my hands. Then Mojo (at the time called Bandit) proceeded to investigate the car, licked our hands with her sandpaper tongue the whole way home and took over my home with her charm and personality. Of which she has much.

Never boring, Mojo is forever finding new ways of entertaining herself (and me) – like watching the baseboard in my bathroom. For tarantulas, maybe?

And with the sense of complete entitlement only naturally found in those of royal descent (or perhaps divine origin – I hear tell that cats have never forgotten that they were once worshipped as gods), she considers not just my apartment, my furniture and me her own, but has also annexed the hallway on my floor as her personal domain and includes it in her evening constitutional while she checks that everything is the way it should be. I’m pretty sure there’s Doberman in her lineage somewhere.

The fur between her ears is the softest I have ever felt, she has eyes the green of arctic ice, more expressive than an Oscar winner’s and she tells me stories and yells at me when I am tardy with her meal. No matter my mood, no matter how crappy I’ve felt, every day for these almost 11 years, she’s opened my heart and made me laugh. We are perfect for each other and share a relationship of equality and dignity that came about because I am physically unable to force her to do anything, instead relying on negotiation and want. It’s been fascinating, heartwarming and lovely to share my home with her all these years and I hope for many more.

Happy Halloween!