Bob

(This is really is kind of funny. Emily just wrote a post on her fish, and I wrote one today on our fish too. We must be thinking on the same wave-length. Love it when this kind of thing happens.)

I had to clean Bob’s bowl yesterday. Bob lives on the kitchen counter and has for the last 3 homes we have lived in. Although we are known to move a lot, it’s still a significant amount of time. Bob’s a Siamese Fighting Fish and I am pretty sure Bob thought he’d won the lottery when we brought him home from the pet store. Ever notice the way those pet stores keep those fish? All stacked up on top of each other in peanut size bowls. I always wondered how those fish survived in such tiny bowls. And more importantly why PETA doesn’t object to it? Don’t fish have rights too?

As Bob went from living in a peanut size bowl to a quart size mansion, whatever feelings of joy he had quickly dissipated when our 3 cats came to check him out. I don’t want to even imagine how Bob felt staring up at them. Talk about a buzz kill for poor Bob. Those cats must have been seriously scary. Reminds me of that old cartoon with Tweety Bird and Sylvester the cat. I loved the line when Tweety would said, “I taut I taw a putty tat!”, while he sat in his cage ready to be pounced by Sylvester. Our own version of pussy cats are pretty similar, only with different cat names…Stimpy, Lynne and Coco.

Every night it’s the same ritual: Stimpy, our scrawny one-toothed completely lovable 17 year old cat, comes to sit by Bob’s liquid mansion. With controlled excitement Stimpy stares mesmerized as Bob swims around. Stimpy’s tail is like a metronome going back and fourth as it slowly sways from side to side. I think early on Stimpy must have wanted to eat Bob but realized the impossibility of that, so instead resigned himself to drink the fishy water right out of Bob’s mansion. It must taste pretty good because Stimpy makes his visit every night. After a while Bob came to some sort of peace with the whole tongue lapping thing going on above his head, and now calmly sits to watch Stimpy drink away. It is a strange site and makes us all have a good laugh whenever we see it. It’s just so wrong, isn’t it?

Bob recently went through what us Sassa girls diagnosed as a state of depression. Bob took to laying on his side, floating, with no movement for a while. Every time we came to the kitchen to find Bob laying there we would run to the bowl and jerk it around, praying he would move. Thankfully every time he would jump out of his state of depression and attempt to half swim away, more of a spazz-like swim really. Not pretty, but moving none the less and a huge relief. I was sure he was going to die. Any day, or moment. But Bob just hung in there (or rather, lay in there, sideways).

A year ago we decided to sell our home and had prospective buyers coming through. Everyone commented on the “dead fish” we had in the kitchen bowl. They kept asking if he was dead but I assuredly said, “No! Just depressed.” I don’t think anyone believed me. Bob was pretty convincing at playing dead. I am sure it crept out more than a few of the prospective buyers.

Now we are in our new home and Bob has pulled himself out of his depressed state of mind. Thankfully he is swimming upright again, but Stimpy's drinking problem hasn't stopped. Maybe that is why Stimpy has such bad breath? I’ve got to buy a toothbrush for that cat.