Happy birthday Sashimi

"What flavours do you have?" was greeted with a lost look. "Just one, tropical flakes" was the reply from my new Chinese friend at the 'Aqua World', when I asked him what his fish-food range was. Yesterday I walked 43 blocks in 35 degree heat to do the only thing 'on my list' yesterday.

Tupperwear container (that doubles as fish tank) $1.49

'Tropical' flavoured fish food flakes $2.00

Plastic dinosaurs (for tank decoration) $1.29

One orange fish $3.00

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TOTAL $7.78

At 6:29pm yesterday I declared it my new friend, Sashimi's birthday. I mean I know it's not his real birthday. I know he was born sometime before I paid a heavy handed, net-wheeling, oriental senior citizen to drag him out of his aqua-orphanage, but that doesn't matter. Yesterday I adopted my first new pet in a long time.

You see I have had a long run of bad experiences with pets in the past. As a kid my house would of had dogs, cats, birds, turtles, Mexican-walking fish, and regular fish at any one time. I don't really remember what happened to most of these animals, i just know it would sort of click that they were not around. I can remember one of the saddest days of my childhood was when I was about ten years-old..

My grandmother raised me as a child and used to get home from work at around 4:30 everyday. I used to finish school at 3:30 so until she got home, my neighbour, Pat used to baby-sit me. Everyday i would hear my Nan pull into the driveway and I would run out to greet her and get into the house so i could gorge myself with chocolate and crisps and watch the sweet cable TV we had. *Yeah, i was a fat kid* At the same time I had only one pet, Scratch. I was given Scratch on my 6th birthday. He was a vicious kitten, with a 'your not fucking touching me' attitude. *I think I always thought he was a quarter tiger or something*. Anyway, i could tame him. He became my best bud until the day I watched my Nan back up the car directly over my dear Scratch. Imagine how badly it hurt (and sounded), when I witnessed my dear Scratch getting pounded by the back wheel of a 1973 Valiant. Now imagine the pain of witnessing my Nan realise what she had done and put the car out of reverse and drive straight back over my bleeding and squealing best friend. All I can remember from this point was watching the defeated, twitches of my dear Scratch, whilst screaming "HE'S STILL ALIVE NAN, HE'S STILL ALIVE!!!", to her trying to calm me down explaining they were just his nerves giving out....

whoa...that's bringing back some memories. Anyway, we shovelled him in a K-Mart bag and threw him in the bin.

Nan got me another cat, along with two dogs, and the rest of Noah's ark to make up for her child abuse she had tainted me with, but it was never the same, and i never loved any one of those pets as much as I did for Scratch. Until now with my new fish, Sashimi.

I am an animal lover and one of the things I most look forward to when getting back to Australia is getting a kitten and puppy and raising them together like the film Milo & Otis. Until then I'm on my training wheels, and resigning myself to pets I don't have to walk. May this be the start of something beautiful.

Oh by the way, for Sashimi's birthday I drew him a Crayola underwater backdrop to make him think he's somewhere tropical and not in grimy Brooklyn. I think he loves it!!