My fish died last week. I am not sure how long he lay on the bottom of his aquarium before I noticed. It wouldn’t have been more than a day, because I’d checked on him the previous afternoon. He wasn’t looking good, unmoving except for his gills, which seemed to be straining.
But then Percy (Percival L. Fishington) never looked that good. He liked to stay near the bottom, or hide in his hollow-log toy. He was probably the least engaged, most depressed-seeming betta fish I have ever had. He lived in our house for two and a half years.
Was he depressed? I have kept many fish in my life and the others have not seemed depressed, but I don’t know. It is unknowable. What is it like to be a fish?
I worry all my creatures are depressed. I worry about my houseplants. In the miniseries “Good Omens,” the character Crowley shouts at his plants to make them grow, and they live in fear of him. (I don’t remember whether this happens in the book.) It’s played for a laugh, and it is funny to watch David Tennant menace a quivering ficus, but it also made me genuinely sad. What if they are scared? What if the plants are sad? Is it my fault?
I know my border collie used to get depressed. She hated the winter, when the sun vanishes behind a screen of milky gray for months on end. (I’m dreading it.) She would run fewer laps in the yard and gradually withdraw. I would notice it more when the sun returned, and with it her smile.
When we first got Sadie, I used to worry about her mental health so much that I took her to agility class. It was meant to give her something to do with her body and neuroses. She was supposed to run through hoops and up ladders and between thin, pliable fencing. She did fine, but she was always nervous, always neurotic. Then I had a human baby and that was the end of agility training. Sorry, Sadie.
Sadie died in January and I still worry about her. Did she hate me for yanking on her leash when she lingered too long on a walk, when I was tired, and I had no idea how sick and how tired she was? I hope she was not sad. Did she know how much I loved her?
Why do people get pets they have to worry about?
The funny thing is that the medical literature is pretty clear that pet ownership confers mental health benefits. A meta-analysis of 17 papers from last year found evidence that pets helped people manage their emotions. The pets in the studies included cats, dogs, hamsters, finches—and fish.
In a few studies, people reported having “a profound connection with their pet,” sometimes even preferring the company of their pets to relationships with humans. In other cases, people viewed their pets as “replacement family members.”
So pets can be a balm to the soul.
To be sure, there are downsides, including the “practical and emotional burden” of pet ownership, not to mention the crushing sadness of losing a pet. But these effects were “largely over-shadowed by co-occurring positive impact of pets in these studies,” according to the meta-analysis.
Is the point of a pet to project our worry onto something soft and responsive? That can work for some people: One study in the meta-analysis pointed out that pets are placid recipients of our neuroses, acting like four-legged priests behind confessionals.
“I find I can address things that perhaps I wouldn’t have done normally if I hadn’t have had the cat to talk to,” said one study participant.
I think there’s another thing, which may be harder to capture in a scientific study. People who have pets worry about them. The act of worrying about something else maybe makes it easier to forget worrying about yourself. Our pets are receptacles of parental affection and recipients of angst and love. You could just as easily worry about the squirrels in your yard, and surely some do, considering that Lowe’s sells dried corn cobs in the bird food aisle. But people don’t relate to squirrels because they don’t live in our houses.
We got a new fish this weekend. He’s red, so we got him some new white and blue rocks, because the 4th of July is still my favorite holiday, dammit, I will not have it ruined. His name is Reddy, thanks to my daughter. I’ll try not to worry about him too much.