Our family pets

Last week both Boris and Cartouche passed away on the same day. It was a really really really sad day for us.

We tend to get really attached to these small creatures and it was heartbraking to lose the two of them on the same day.

The only explanation we could come up with is that they probably caught cold in the previous week when we ran out of electricity on a quite cold evening. There’s nothing much that we could have done, but knowing what we now know, next time we’ll take extra care of our pets if a similar situation arises.

We have recently purchased a new 29 US gallons aquarium which caused us some difficulty, as could be expected.

Firstly, we had trouble catching a few fishes, especially our plecko. After their move, they seemed happy to have more space, but the stress unfortunately killed two of them: GrosYeux and Gougou.

The situation is now under control and we plan to add new ones shortly.

I will post new pictures here soon.

Yesterday morning I almost freaked out when I noticed water leaking from the front of the fishes’ aquarium.

I was immediately convinced it had the same seal issue as the previous one and that I could be in a lot of trouble and possibly lose my fish. Fortunately, after thorough investigation, I found the water came from the filter.

For some reason the components had gone up a little bit, which caused small waves to overflow and then pass under the aquarium to the front.

Now I’ll take a look for that once in a while, to avoid a greater disaster.

For those of you that don’t have an aquarium, without wanting to scare you off, at least be advised that it takes a lot of maintenance and is also a big cause of stress.

Boris scared the hell out of me 2 days ago. When I come home, I usually go see him a little, but he wasn’t there when I did.

I even turned the aquarium around to make sure but he was nowhere to be seen. After looking around, I found him underneath the heater. I think the cats scared him because he roared really loud when we took him back to his aquarium. We immediately blocked the access with cardboard until we find a more aesthetic solution.

At first he seemed to have difficulty with his legs but today he seemed in shape.

We had installed a new rock a few days back, which allowed him to do his stunt. You can see him with the stone before it happened:

Nous avons récemment acheté un plus gros pot de crevettes séchées pour Boris, afin d’économiser un peu. Le lendemain, après l’avoir nourri, nous l’avons vu avec la bouche très grande ouverte.

Il avait l’air souffrant et ça m’a beaucoup inquiétée. Heureusement il a réussis à recracher ce qui l’avait étouffé, une crevette assez grosse.

C’est là qu’on a réalisé que ce pot contenait des crevettes plus grosses. On lui en a redonné par la suite en le surveillant, et depuis il fait attention. En fait il ne mange plus les grosses crevettes, ce que je trouve intelligent.

Ça peut sembler banal mais il a appris à faire attention après une seule mauvaise expérience alors que Nuage, elle, s’est fréquemment étouffée en mangeant trop vite, et n’a jamais appris. Les tortues seraient-elles plus intelligentes que les chats? Probable!

My cats are getting lazy lately

Although small, cat fishes are really efficient at cleaning an aquarium…

…especially with the assistance of our window cleaner, Squeegee:

These past few days, Nuage has finally calmed down a bit. She didn’t wake me and didn’t request as much attention.

She still mews a lot, but it’s in her nature. The only thing that tickles me about this is that she’s giving a bad example to her younger sister, Tempête.

The reason I say this is because Tempête tends to imitate her and mews more, when she does. Nuage must be a model for her, even though she’s still a bit jealous after nearly 2 years.