Inez Wants a Pet

One day, recently, Inez comes up to me and says, "Mommy, can I have a hamster?"
I say, "What?" in slight disbelief. Did I hear correctly?
She repeats her question and okay, apparently I did. So I said "No."
"Why?"
"Because Mommy doesn't like pets and cleaning up after pets.
"Oh, okay."
"Besides, you had fish before; what happened to your fish?"
"Died?"
Till today, she hasn't asked again. Maybe when she's much much older like when she has her own kids, I'll let her get a hamster or something. Actually, I bought her pet Siamese fish before and guppies to put in my mom's fish bowl and that whatchamacallit, wooden water fountain contraption that every house has got to have coz it's like the trend? A pergola or something. Anyway, the wooden thingy was not deep enough and the fish jumped out the very day we bought it. Then a cat jumped to eat it. So there went one fish and the other fish disappeared too not long after. And before that, my youngest sis and mom went crazy about fish, I dunno what started the craze and we bought so many fish, including a pufferfish. We also bought those beautiful Siamese Fighting Fish and of course housed them separately. My sis had one and so did my daughter, and she took joy in feeding it. My sister kept the water clean.
Do you know that a tiny pufferfish could be quite vicious and that it attacked other fish? It's like there's a Bermuda Triangle in there and fish were going missing, but there were no remains. I swear to you it was spooky at that time. Turned out the pufferfish was eating all the other fish and we caught it in the act. It was tearing off the flesh of a fish that was floating by pulling it down to the bottom of the bowl to press it down so it could take a bite. I guess the fishbowl was kinda small and there was not much room for escape for the other fish. So we took the pufferfish back to the shop and exchanged it for another. When the last fish moved on, we did not buy fish again until my mom bought herself that pergola thingy and you know what happened to the guppies...
Also, that thing started leaking and it became very messy; so now my Mom puts plants in it, on it and around it.