Since Sasha has reached the ripe and mature age of 14 months, we have decided it's about time she started carrying her own weight around here. That said, she has her first household chore: Sasha feeds the fish.
The burden of responsibility does not seem to weigh too heavily upon her. In fact, the feeding of the fish is about her favorite part of getting up in the morning, and if she could, she would feed them several times a day. More or less every time she notices the fish are there at all. She is unimpressed with my explanation of water chemistry and why overfeeding is a bad idea. ("If the fish don't eat all the food, honey, it turns into poison, and then the fishies can't breathe anymore, and they get very sick. You have to wait until tomorrow.")
Of course, the top of the aquarium is far, far out of her reach, by design, so I hold her on my hip for the task. And I wouldn't dream of letting her handle the flake. Sasha's job is to toss in the sinking algae tablets. She'd love to do several at once, but I only let her do one at a time, because she gets upset when it's time to stop.
This is about how it goes: she pushes her paws into the canister, trying to get a fistful of tablets. I remove the excess tablets from her clutches and put them back. She looks at me sidelong, tries to put the tablet into her own mouth, gives me a wicked smile when I tell her the fish food is not for HER, and plunks the tablet into the water. This cycle is repeated about three times, varying depending on how seriously she is trying to eat the tablets herself. Eventually, I declare the feeding over and let her close the tank. She does this loudly and with much force.
I can tell that caring for a pet is having a beneficial effect on her. For example, she is learning that fish-feeding happens no more than once a day, no matter how volubly she opines otherwise. This valuable understanding of time will serve her well in the future. Soon, she will be ready for a puppy.
My kitchen is: Oh, who knows. It might be clean under all the bottles needing recycling, but I sure can't tell.
Posted by andrea at August 12, 2003 10:44 PM