Kids

Nate and I do not have children, but today he told me, “I think one of our babies is going to be red.” How do I explain this contradiction?

You see, we have some guppy reproduction going on in our tank. We haven’t gone all out and bought the nets, dividers, and the assorted paraphernalia you buy when you really want to breed the fishies. All we’ve done is buy this floating grass that the babies can hide in. I know this sounds bad, but we don’t really care if the baby guppies survive. We’ve got plenty of fish and usually the adults eat the eggs before they even hatch. BUT, we have seen little guys from time to time and we felt bad because they always got eaten. To assuage our guilt, we bought them the grass to hide in. Right now we appear to have two survivors, two teeny fish, and one of them appears to be red.

Even though we have a pretty lackadaisical attitude toward their survival, we still refer to them as our babies. Weird, I know. We sort of hope they’ll survive, but it’s a very cautious hope because we know it’s likely they won’t make it in the long run.

Then I started thinking about how I used to call Roscoe my baby all the time and treat him like one, holding him and squeezing him and just generally tormenting the poor cat. But now that we have Walker, who is a bona fide puppy at 10 months, I’m calling him the baby and squeezing him and bothering him instead. Roscoe will be four in December so he doesn’t qualify as a baby anymore. (I can’t believe he’s almost four. Next month, Sophie—the rott mix—will be 10.)

Even though we don’t have children, we feel like we do. We’re constantly cleaning up someone’s poo or puke and sometimes both. Walker likes to eat his own poo and will then often throw it up afterwards. Nice. And let me tell you, he’s lucky he’s cute because that poo-puke is a foul-smelling concoction.

Nate’s brother Travis thinks Walker might eat his own poo because he was a stray for a while and still seems slightly unsure that food will always be available. We feed both Walker and Sophi regularly, but if you are a little late and God forbid sleep in, then Walker will eat his poo when you let him outside. Oh ye, of little faith. The food bowl will not run empty!

So we clean up after three animals and their bodily functions, watch the circle of life in the tank, and psychoanalyze our pets. I sort of feel like we’re parents already.