The goldfish attains enlightenment

I hate looking after other people's pets. They nearly always die. Even though you check on them with paranoid regularity, rabbits tunnel out of their Blue Peter chicken wire runs and get themselves mullered by ravenous stray dogs, guinea pigs get foot rot from damp straw, hamsters just lose themselves somewhere in the house and then one day you feel yourself hoovering over a lump. But fish, you would think, would be easy. A sprinkling of fish flakes every day and leave them to it. No walking. No grooming. No having to pick up soft warm turds with an Asda bag over your hand and doing that clever inversion hand movement, tying the ends and leaving it on a wall. No, fish are easy.

I tap on the glass. Shrek, the rather anaemic-looking one from the semi-legal fun fair, eyeballs me for a moment and then drifts down to the pirate treasure chest. Princess Fiona, bought in from a pet shop for Shrek's pleasure, swims up to the flatulating filter, swims back to the other side, swims to bottom, swims to the filter. Such is the life of the goldfish. I always thought their three second memory a blessing. A new world every three seconds. You can imagine black and white Bono clicking his fingers - "every time I do this, a goldfish forgets and starts again." What a nice life. Where am I? Bowl, food, that other fish. Where am I? Bowl, food, that other fish. Kind of comforting and transcendental in its Zen-simplicity.

Yes, the goldfish is well on its way to attaining enlightenment. It can only live in the moment. Past and Future are concepts utterly incomprehensible to it. It cannot grasp at anything, because as soon as it does it forgets what it is to grasp. It can form no attachments. It cannot feel envy or anger or grief or love. Becoming a goldfish is the penultimate stage on the road to Nirvana.

But Shrek seems rather still. Princess Fiona is staring at the minature Titanic buried nose first into the red shingle at the bottom of the tank. Neither seem to have the same amount of scales as they did this morning. Both of them have bits missing. Do the scales grow back? Have I overfed them? They have been gnawing at each other all day - is this some perfectly normal goldfish S & M?

Then, I realise that Shrek is dead, and he is dead because Princess Fiona has been eating him.