So the book fair was this week, and Hadley came home excited! She immediately dived into her newest purchase entitled "How to Care for Your Cat." She informed me that she bought this book on the off chance that one day in the far distance she might have the tiniest possibility that we would get a cat OR if our neighbors go out of town she can give THEIR cats the proper care. (We've already offered multiple times, hopefully they'll go on vacation soon!!!)
So while Hadley was devouring her book on how to bath and feed a cat, my stone heart was starting to melt. And then, I remembered the last time we had a pet...
Our Beta fish, Ricky, (named after my brother) was a surprise from the Easter bunny when Hadley was 5. Now you may ask, what ever happened to Ricky...did he move to Cleveland with us? Did we leave him in Fort Worth? Why don't we ever talk about him? Well, as could be expected, Hadley was ecstatic to finally have a pet and very eager to show him off at Kindergarten show-and-tell. After receiving advance permission, and Mr. Joey making an exception and allowing Hadley to bring a living thing to show-and-tell, we packed up Ricky and drove him carefully down to Alice Carlson Elementary.
Well, those of you who know me very well, already know that we were a wee bit late and so I was trying to make-up for that lateness by driving as fast possible under the circumstances. As luck would have it, we took the turn into Hadley's school just a little bit too fast and.....SPLASH! All over the carpet floor of our car. Fish water, rocks, and ..... RICKY!!!! Now at this point I was rotating through the county hospital ED and had seen multiple people die during unsuccessful codes, gun shot wounds, car wrecks, head lacerations, etc. During all these encounters I had managed to keep my cool and keep my lunch, but for some reason, seeing little Ricky flipping and flopping on our car floor something tripped in me and I started to FREAK-OUT!! I screached to the curb and started screaming along with Hadley in a lovely ladies duet. I ran to the back and found 2 bottled waters. I dumped one into the tank...which rose about 1 inch. Then I used my head, took a deep gulp and picked up little Ricky and squeezed him into my second water bottle. At this point I managed to stop screaming and look at poor Hadley who was crying. The thought crossed my head about how wise it was for the school to have a policy on no living things for show-and-tell!!!!
I finished the drive to school, limped into her classroom where Hadley gave her teacher and hug and told him the whole story…including the part about her mom screaming so loud it scared her. Well, we filled up Ricky’s tank, and tried our best to take care of him, but he was never the same again. We had a fish burial in the backyard a few days later.
And so now I remember, why we don’t have pets!
