A Fish Tale

A year and a half ago, during the week before Thanksgiving, I invited four young women over for an American Thanksgiving. One of the gals arrived with a jar of fish, live fish, for me as a present from her and her husband.

One of the fish died immediately, which was sad, but not unusual. Stress of being moved, new water, and so forth probably did it in.

While we were in the States this past November through the beginning of March, all of the other fish except one died. I don't know why and I won't speculate, but I will just assume that the caretake did take care of them and not neglect them. Fish usually don't live all that long.

Cheyenne has never been interested in them. That surprises me because she is a cat, after all, and cats are supposed to love to eat fish, love to watch them, love to try to catch them. Once she had inspected the fish bowl and figured out what I was doing when I set it all up, she approved it and then ignored it/them.

Two weeks ago this couple brought me another fish, one of the same species so my lone fish would not be lonely. I don't remember the name of these fish, all I know is that they are very agressive and 'not nice,' like a gold fish 'is nice' in comparrison.

Old fish, a male, did not like New Fish, who was supposed to be a female which was supposed to mean that they would live together in fish harmony. Instead, he tried to kill her, or least damage her, by ramming into her over and over again with his very hard mouth. She huddled in the corner of the tank, if you can call a rounded tank edge a corner, and if you can call floating mouth up, tail down, fins barely moving at all 'huddling.' Old Fish just swam around and every once in awhile let her know he was still there - bam!

So, I had pity on poor New Fish and put her in a seperate container and set it beside the other container. Old and New spent hours looking at each other through the glass and plastic (different kinds of containers). That way they were not lonely, just seperated.

I was fond of Old Fish. He always got really excited when I came into the room. When I sat at the table he would swim around and if he realized I was looking at him, he got really excited and swam around even faster, or would stop and stare at me, all the while sending me telepathic messages of feedmefeedmefeedmefeedme. When I would pick up his food, he knew it - he knew I was going to feed him. His joy was amazing. Before I could get a few little crumbs out of his bag, he'd be waiting at the top of his water, mouth already open in anticipation.

Yesterday the plumbers were here, but I did spend time with my fish. I fed them. I talked to them. I watched them. I talked to Mel a bit about them. I enjoyed them. I was aware of their presence in my home. I cared.

Imagine my utter surprise last night after dinner when I came out of the kitchen, looked down into the New Fish's container and said, "Hi, little fishy!" and she swam around all excitedly. Then I looked a bit farther over to the other container and said, "Where is my fish?!!!?"

Old Fish was gone. Not in his container. Not under the skinny little water grass. Not huddling in a corner. Not floating belly up. Gone, I say, totally gone, non-existant, not there.

"Mel! My fish is GONE!" Mel looked up from his reading and said something to the effect of "huh? where is he? where did he go?"

I looked behind his container. No fish. I rechecked the smaller container - just one New Fish. He hadn't jumped into her container by some amazing feat of fish athletics. I looked down on the floor, no fish in sight. I asked Cheyenne, who was lying on the couch all curled up asleep, "Did you eat my fish??" and she just looked smuggly at me in total innocence and blinked before going back to sleep. Finally I pulled the case that holds my fancy tableware that Mel gave me for our 25th wedding anniversary and I keep under the table because there is no other place for it in our tiny flat, away from the wall and looked there.

I spied a dark gray shape back there in the shadows. My first thought was, "Great. What a huge dust bunny! grrr. I know Mel vacuumed back there just a couple days ago." My second thought was, "Oh no! Old Fish!" I reached back, grabbed hold of it and sure enough. Old Fish was now Dried Out Petrified Dead Old Fish. Almost hard as a rock already. I was very surprised at how quickly he dried out - after all it could only have been a couple of hours.

I flushed him. Just couldn't put him in the trash.

I was sad. I am still sad. I liked Old Fish, meany that he was. He had character. He liked me (ok, he liked his food, but he like me, too, I'm sure).

My guess is that he did try to jump into the New Fish's container. So sad. If he'd just been nicer, he'd still be alive....

I'm just glad that my cat is innocent for reals, and has not become a fish killer.

Now I wonder - do I try and get another fish so New Fish will not be lonely? Hmmmm.