Technically, I’ve never lost a pet. I say that because I don’t think one goldfish eating another is a pet going astray. When I was a little girl, my parents weren’t big on having animals in the house so my pet choices were limited to different varieties of fish that I could watch swimming in a bowl or small aquarium. Sadly, I can remember waking up one morning and there being one less fish in the aquarium. According to my parents it hadn’t died, so the only remaining conclusion was that the smallest fish was eaten by one of the larger fish. Although I wasn’t happy about that loss, I don’t remember being overly sad. I think I was more curious about how or why the poor little thing was gulped up.

I imagine I would have genuinely felt sad if I had lost a bigger pet, like a puppy.