Strange thing happened when I was out for a walk the other day. I met my friend Phil who was taking his goldfish for a walk. Yes, his goldfish. He places the goldfish bowl in a pram and walks round the park to give the fish a change of scenery.
I suppose it’s not as strange as me taking the dog for a walk. My dog is so lazy that he now stands on a skateboard and I have to pull him behind me with a rope. Every so often he gets off the skateboard, sniffs the aroma around a tree or lamp post and leaves his calling card before mounting the skateboard again.
Anyway, Phil and I got talking and he asked me the oddest question ever.
“Do you ever undress in front of your pets?”
What?
I must admit, I had never considered the question before; but Phil said that he noticed recently his goldfish acting most strangely and they became very agitated whenever he undressed.
I explained that looking through the goldfish bowl everything they see must be out of proportion with each other; so looking at him must be quite a shock. It’s like looking at those concave and convex mirrors in fairgrounds when different parts of the body look out of proportion to each other.
(At this point my mind was doing summersaults, as I suspect yours is doing right now!)
He thought about it for a while and then said “I mean … pets may be a different species to us humans but they still think, you know. Fish, dogs, cats, hamsters and the like … they see you with nothing on and they may well think and wonder what is going on!”
I thought about this for a moment and I was about to say something when Phil continued:
“Now whenever we take the goldfish bowl upstairs in the bedroom we cover it with a towel before we undress so as not to traumatize the fish!”
“You take the goldfish to the bedroom with you?” I asked incredulously.
“Yes of course, they are part of the family you know. We don’t just leave them downstairs in the TV room. But you haven’t answered my question. Do you undress in front of your dog?” he asked.
I looked at my dog enjoying another tree and said nothing. Perhaps I should conduct a survey about this I thought.
So, what do you think?
