Do we have fish, or do fish have people?

When you buy a fish, it seems that it will be easy- they dont need to be walked, only fed once or twice a day, and they seem pretty content with swimming in circles.
Then you hit week two, when you find that the fish needs to have a larger tank because "Guppy" has grown into more of a carp than a goldfish, and needs 20 gallons instead of ten.

Tank maintenance becomes a nightmare, especially when you have to clean the scum out of the corners of the tank with your old toothbrush. Wasn't that what the thirty dollar tank cleaner was for? And yet you can't just give up on the poor fish, because you start to feel guilty. After all, you have a bathroom and a kitchen in two separate places. The fish eats, swims, and goes to the bathroom all within the same one-foot space.

Soon, you begin to think the fish is probably getting a bit lonely. Maybe if you get one of those snails that clean the tank it will cut your job in half? So you rush to the pet store and once again drop even more cash on some tiny snails that crawl slowly up and down your new large tank with your getting-bigger fish.

At first, the snails and the fish seem to be fine, but one day, after you wake up to feed the fish it's 20 dollar gourmet fish food that takes care of rare fish skin diseases, and you find that the snails are gone. The fish does not seem interested in its expensive food anymore, and even looks a little bloated. A few days later, you catch the fish in the act of sucking the snails off the side of the tank and crunching down on the poor little guys like they're potato chips.

So no more snails. You go back to the pet store and get a medium sized sucker fish, only to find that it too needs extra tank space, and are guilted into buying an even larger tank. In turn, you find that your thirty dollar fish tank cleaner cannot support that amount of water, and have to get a bigger filter as well.

When you get home, you watch the tank with the two fish and suddenly realize that about a week ago was the last time you had money to actually eat, and you slept through an entire night without dreaming about fish.
Maybe you will get a dog instead.