Remember Kissy, ?-February 13, 2007 She (well, whatever) was Lily’s special fish, the only one she had picked out and, with encouragement from Sam, named. When she died (again, whatever), we went the honesty death route. She died, I told Lily. Why? She was sick–very very sick, fish sick. Why? I don’t know. Where is she? She couldn’t swim anymore, and she couldn’t breathe, and she died. Why? I don’t know, but she’s gone.

The next day, Lily said sadly that she thought there was “only one Kissy in the world.” I agreed, but offered to take her to buy “a fish that looked like Kissy” as soon as it stopped snowing.

So we bought Reddy, who actually does not look like Kissy, but it took us about a week before time permitted the 25 minute journey to the fish place and by then she’d kind of lost interest in Kissy. That was Thursday.

Today Sam found Reddy stuck behind the filter, upside-down. Lily came up. “They’re playin’ famiwy!” she said, with delight. “They’re playing Hide and Seek! He hidin’!”

A quick poke at Reddy revealed that he was not, in fact, playing. We rushed Lily away and sprang into action. Jettisoned all late afternoon plans and made the frantic nearly hour long round-trip to the fish store. Sam was delighted to be included in the ruse, and, in fact, fished Reddy out and flushed him all by himself. I do not think he will be so sanguine when inevitably fate takes Swordtail, Stripey or Goldie (I think he could handle the loss of one of the Zippys), but we’ll see.

The replacement Reddy is now in place. It looks much livelier than the last one (or is that just wishful thinking?). I’m pretty sure it will pass muster in the morning.