One day, I went to the pet store looking for some sort of cat entertainment device. I didn't know what kind of thing they might like, I already had a buttload of toys for them and since I'm not a fan of battery operated cat toys I was running out of options. Fairly arbitrarily I determined a fish tank would be good. Cats like to watch fish, right?
I picked up a little two gallon starter-tank and a pair of fan-tailed goldfish. Lunch - orange and white, and Dinner - a calico.
Neither of them really look like this...
Jess never seemed to care for the fish, but Kelly was pretty enthused. He would randomly seem to remember that they were swimming around in their tank and he would squish his nose against the tank and stare at them.
Lunch and Dinner didn't seem to care so much about the cats watching them and they lived (fairly) happily in their mini tank at my parent's house until August when I had to move to Michigan.
They did not live so happily in Pickle Paradise.
I have one of those giant glass pickle jars. I figured that the jar would be a good way to keep my fish safe during the the eight hour trip. They couldn't get spilled out or squashed under luggage. However, Lunch and Dinner did NOT appreciate this particular mode of travel. I think that maybe they didn't like the whole clear cylinder deal....
From this experience I learned that, yes, fish can be angry.
It's weird.
So, we moved to Michigan and Lunch and Dinner continued happily living in their tiny tank. They also were happily growing.
After over a year in their tiny fish tank, I decided Lunch and Dinner deserved a new, larger home. Also, because they did not actually croak after the first week, which is what I had expected, I figured they deserved a REAL tank to live in. But we would be moving soon and I didn't want to set up the bigger tank yet.
Last summer we moved another hour north. Pickle Paradise again. Angry fish again.
After we moved and got settled in, I picked up a ten gallon tank and some live plants. Very happy fishies!
Things were going swimmingly (durrhurrhurr) and everybody, especially the cats who like to drink out of it, loved the new big tank.
But, sadly, tragedy struck. AV and I had to go away for the weekend and when we came back Dinner had gone to that ocean in the sky. Poor guy was doing a solo floating show. I felt really awful about this, not only because my fish was almost TWO YEARS OLD, but also because I'm not exactly sure when Dinner started this particular show. I'm fairly certain it was at least twelve hours before I knew about it...
Of course, I whipped his little carcass out of the tank as fast as possible. I had heard that a dead fish can poison your other fish and the last thing I needed was another guy floating belly-up in there. Because I was supposed to getting ready for a dentist appointment, mentoring at the elementary school, and a doctor's appointment, I was pretty flustered.
I would have liked to have made a nice little fishy burial out in the yard for Dinner, or at the very least put him out there so Our Friend (the grey neighbor cat) could have eaten him. But, because I was now running late, I had to flush him.
Later that day, the toilet clogged. Somebody got the last laugh there, I do believe.
It's been nearly a week, and I've still been thinking about Dinner's demise.
Dinner showed no signs of being sick or any other abnormal behavior. Lunch is still healthy and active. If there was some sort of illness in the tank, I would have thought that Lunch would also have gotten it.
Sadly, it did not occur to me that I should do a tiny fish autopsy.
Not that I would have known the difference between a healthy dead fish and a sickly dead fish....
Anyho... I put Lunch in the mini tank again, cleaned out the tank, got rid of all the algae and nastiness and stuck him back in there. He appears to be thrilled.
I believe Lunch either A. always hated Dinner, B. is incredibly stupid and has no clue what's going on, or C. has absoutely no memory whatsoever and doesn't even know that there was ever a second fish.
But no worries, AV and I bought two new goldfish at Meijer today, a gold and white one with black spots (Tea Time) and another calico (Snacks). They're about an inch long. Lunch might possibly be able to physically eat them. So I'm hoping option A is not the reason Lunch is so super happy right now.
Right now, the little fish are in the mini tank* and Lunch is still having the greatest time ever in the big tank. I'm going to be leaving Tea Time and Snacks in the little tank for about two weeks to make sure they're not sickly then they're be moving in with Lunch.... We'll see how that goes... hopefully nobody gets eaten!!
Cheers,
Red
*As a side note, we've been calling the little tank "Bellevue", as in the insane asylum. When I put Lunch back in there it was totally empty because I needed to clean everything still. Quite like those empty, padded rooms for crazy people. FYI fish do not appreciate totally empty fish tanks. It freaks them out.
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