Bubbles

This year Santa didn’t quite deliver what Master Eight wanted – a kitten. Instead he got a goldfish.

His pet kitten has been a hot topic since (ashamedly) not long after we lost our beloved pussy cat.
“Mum, when you get me a kitten, if it’s a boy, I want to call it Michael Angelo or Rafael but Rafy for short.”
“What about Lucy?” offered Miss Six.
“What about Hatupatu,” chimed in Master Six.
“Nup, it’s Rafy,” Master Eight confirmed.
“But when you have a pet, you have to take responsibility for the good times and the bad.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well because it’s a baby, it will have some accidents. It won’t wear a nappy like babies do so you will have to clean up its wees and poos.”
His smile froze, before:
“I know, Jayla can do that!” He went off in search of his happy-go-lucky sister, who’d wandered off.
“Yep, it’s all sorted,” he announced triumphantly on returning with his sister in tow.
“Will you really clean up the kitten’s wees and poos?” I asked her and she nodded meekly.
I was not entirely convinced and getting a kitten at this time of year did not tie in with our holiday plans so he was told the kitten had to wait. Instead, I decided to test his responsibility with a gold fish. A last-minute Christmas Eve dash to the pet shop ensued where I choose a cheeky little nifty fish, who stopped to make googly eyes at me before darting around his peers and proving difficult for the pet shop owner to catch.
Of course I had to buy a bag of coloured stones and an old ship wreck for him to play in resulting in my ‘top-up’ present almost costing more than the main one. But with my soft spot for kittens, I was lucky to get out of there with only a fish and its paraphernalia, which probably had something to do with the fact all the kittens had just sold out.
Back home I hastily set my little friend up in his bowl before the kids returned and carried him down to the garage where he would spend the night.
Santa’s snacks were out, the reindeer bucket filled with water and stockings laid out on beds with three excited kiddies pretending to go to sleep within.
It took a while, they kept finding excuses to get up, until I showed them a Santa tracker online stating the next stop was Australia. I think it was most likely American and New Zealand had got lumped with Australia but I told the kids that this must mean Santa was already in New Zealand and they went hurtling back to bed, screaming with excitement.
At long last, all was (genuinely) silent and I got to work filling stockings. I carried up the fish who, by now, had calmed down and was looking rather dejected with his new surroundings without his buddies, and set it up in Master Eight’s room.
Finally, after realising I still had presents to wrap and a salad to make, replying to the children’s note and disposing of the snacks which had been left out since the morning (clearly they thought Santa should be on a diet this year – a measly packet of raisons, a rice cracker and a glass of water) I dropped into bed around midnight.
But at 4am I was woken with a light going on – Master Eight’s. I catapulted out of bed and turned it off while he was in the bathroom. But when he returned, he switched it back on.
Not wanting to do the whole Santa thing at 4am I shot back out of bed and switched it back off with a warning. Luckily he’d practically been sleep-walking so hadn’t noticed anything. But that was it for me. Like an excited kid I did not go back to sleep so managed to get through Christmas Day on strong Panadol.

At 5.45am, in raced the kids clutching their filled stockings and within half a minute everything had been ripped open. Sometime later that morning Master Eight went back into his room and noticed his fish. He was suitably stoked and, as he sat and watched “Bubbles” swimming round and through his ship wreck, proclaimed him “adorable”.

His fascination with Bubbles only lasted a few days – he is currently off camping and forgot to arrange someone to feed him.

And as poor Bubbles’ water gets murkier and murkier, I’m thinking, yeah-nah, Rafy… Lucy… Hatupatu – whatever it was – can wait.