Backyard Goldfish, and a bit of Grief

I don't quite know why I got fish.

They were a little bit of an impulse buy, and by impulse I mean I thought about it a lot. And I talked to people about it a lot. One day when I happened to be at the pet store because one of the kids was getting something for the cats or the dogs or the fish tanks or whatever, I grabbed a few of those twenty-cent little goldfish that are half expected to be eaten by bigger fish.

Three of the four made it through the winter and grew to be nearly five inches long.

It's funny to me that I like having fish, especially that I have the fish out in the backyard in this pond / planter we call The Shire. The whole things is a little bit of a disaster, in part because I'm not nearly as good at stonework as I think I am. I'm good at making things waterproof, but the waterfall aspect of the Shire has not gone super great. Fortunately, it's probably in a little bit of a growth year, since the resident gardeners planted bulbs in all the bare patches last fall. I'm gonna have to do a little bit of cleanup this spring to make sure we don't have any standing water or leaks. The fish pond part has maintained nicely and the three rather large goldfish in there seem content, especially now that their water is not barely above freezing.

Goldfish, cats, dogs. I've always had pets.

It's funny because I don't really describe myself as a cat person. I enjoy cats and I enjoy how you can spend time with them until they decide to go off on their own. In some ways, kind of like getting a fish that you're going to keep outside, I wonder if that's inherent in people who like cats: They like being ignored by the cat. know.

Seems most people I've met who would describe themselves as cat people actually really love cats and like petting them and maybe want to have like five or more so that if one cat's ignoring them, another pays attention to them, and then another one, and then...

Makes sense, but at that point it gets to having a dog who begs for your attention all the time. I have and have had them for most of my life, barring a period of twelve years when I didn't have a dog in my own house, and I didn't really miss it because I didn't want the responsibility of going outside on such a regular schedule. My friends who had dogs and would come for gaming would always either leave fairly early or I would feel bad about my buddies saying, "Okay, I gotta go let the dogs out, but just two more turns, two more turns!"

There's a responsibility in having a pet. A responsibility that we kind of put on ourselves.

I was hoping to have Meru the Infinite Void with me when I was recording today. Not necessarily because he's the most photogenic of cats (he's completely dark and moves around a lot) but he's also kind of an apex cat. Purrs really nicely. He's got a cute meow. Has a habit of sitting on my shoulder, literally wrapping himself across the back of my neck as I walk around the house.

And this morning he was attacking my ankles repeatedly because he wanted me to take him down to my office where his food bowl is. I've already fed him today and there's probably still food in the bowl, but he likes the routine. He likes that ritual of being picked up, walking downstairs, being put on his cat tree... and then jumping off the cat tree and climbing up onto the shelf where I put his bowl to keep it away from the dogs.

Sometimes I wonder if part of the reason we get pets is so that we have something to remind us of how to take care of ourselves.

I know that I can get couch-locked pretty easy, especially when there's a major project in my mind or I manage to push past the anxiety and give myself permission to just... watch a few movies. That regular routine of coming out every few days in the winter to make sure that the fish had food kind of kept me looking at things in the backyard.

When I was in my twenties and things were really tangled in my brain I knew I could at least come home from work, pick up Dominic the Cat, and lay on the floor with him purring on my chest for twenty minutes until I felt like I was home again. I think we're coming up on a year since Dom passed. I haven't really checked my notes on that because it's not something I like thinking about. Like with so many other things when a death or a demand or a need is immediate and close to us... often it hits a lot harder than it does in the abstract.

I have a beautiful drawing of Dom in my office, which I've been glancing at it all week while I teach. As much as I don't really have solid words for what I feel about that drawing of Dom, I also don't have solid words for what I feel about my old cat. The picture is there mostly because it is a special thing made by a special person, but for the longest time I couldn't bear to even look at it.

When I think about the people I've lost, whether to relationship changes or death or moving or just the way that life passes us by, I suppose it helps that I've got these other experiences that are equally confusing to me. I often don't really register that the person is gone for good. It feels like they've stepped out of the room. Feels like I've just gone away on a weekend trip.

With old buddies, that's always been a wonderful, powerful advantage: we can often pick up from exactly where we were on the rare occasions we get together for a drink or game. I get them talking and hear about their lives or they ask me about work and... we click right back into the old patterns, with perhaps some minor shifts as kids grow and careers shift.

Having those smaller versions of big life challenges to draw upon when I'm overwhelmed by the bigger things is genuinely helpful. I've got a lot of opinions about how fiction helps us with this as well, but I'm sticking with reality today.

I'm sticking with fish and cats and dogs and people I've lost.

This has been one of those weeks where I've had a lot more time than usual to think and a lot more time than usual to kind of get my notes in order. I finally sat down and went through my notes and composed a ten-page compendium of my fantasy setting that I've been using for somewhere between five and twenty years.

I know that might sound kind of random after all this talk of pets and life changes, but they all connect in my brain. When I'm thinking about a major project I need to work on (such as a novel I want to write or a video game analysis that I'm halfway through and need to finish before it turns into another failed project), the truth behind the scenes is often a lot more simple than the complexities I'm grappling with: I need to come out and feed the fish.

Not necessarily because the fish are hungry, the cat is hungry, or the dogs haven't been walked in six hours. No. Because I need those things. I have those external things to look at and help me recognize that I need to do some caretaking.

It's sometimes easier than sensing that I need to take care of myself.

It's kind of like how eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner can keep you going, even if you're not someone who tracks how hungry they are very well.

And in such times as these, when the traditional markers of success and failure and good and evil and truth and falsehood are blown to the winds... sometimes the question isn't what I need to do for work or want to do for pleasure, but what I should do for myself.