Make that three cats (2 permanent), a turtle, a Beta, a goldfish, two minnows, a frog, and a dozen crickets

LuLu's fish died, a mere 12 hours after its 'warranty' expired. Shoddy workmanship Darwin, shoddy workmanship. God woulda done better.

[note: she'd named it "Cheetah" after the dark pattern on its back. She didn't pronounce it 'cheetah' however. It was more like "Cheetahhhhh!" in kind of a "jazz hands" voice.

Anyhow, as I did with YaYa's goldfish, I fed him to our turtle (although unlike with YaYa, I fudged and said I gave him a noble burial). This morning I took the kids to the pet store and wasted another $15.

We picked up a goldfish and a cheap plastic plant for Lu, and twelve feeder minnows and two dozen crickets for the turtle (twelve large roach-like monsters, and twelve little ones). In the end I wound up adding two of the minnows to LuLu's goldfish bowl, and to satisfy a suddenly insect-happy Smiley, gifted him the twelve little crickets.

As for the turtle, these are rare treats for he-who-normally-survives-on-turtle-pellets. He also was treated to a sunbath in the great outdoors. In a moment I'll take him in, as it's a bloomin' oven outside today.

I did want to mention an unrelated but odd thing that happened this past week. While driving home from work Thursday a woman cut in front of me. I hit the brakes and almost, but not quite, came to a stop. When I resumed driving I felt around for the gas pedal and couldn't find it. I actually had to glide to a stop on the side of the road, get out, and take a look.

The pedal had actually disconnected and was laying flat on the floor.

In such situations a mechanic friend is a Godsend, and I am blessed to have one who will ride to the rescue at any time of day. Roy came out w/in a half hour. "What the F did you do? I've never seen this before," he said. "If I were you, I'd start praying."

"Dude, you fix it and I'll drop and say a rosary right here."

Five minutes later, I was on the road. Apparently the throttle cable (?) attached to the gas pedal became entangled with the brake and disconnected after the abrupt stop. ???

"Is it going to happen again?" I asked after I damn near kissed the guy.

"I've never seen it before," he said. "So I'm thinking it's a once in a lifetime thing."

Let's hope so.