Law & Order F.V.U. (Fish Victims Unit)

Holy Cat Chow! We have an unexplained death to solve and it happened right in our kitchen! The victim: Blackie - a four day old fish found mysteriously floating at the top of his fish bowl. The perp: Rudy, a Maine Coon who was caught red-handed stalking said fish while I was busy making school lunches and searching for cereal that agreed with the two finicky fish owners watching Sponge Bob in the den a few yards away.

At the time the iPhone picture was snapped, Blackie was still quite vibrant, zipping around the bottom of the bowl, on the lookout for his morning fish flakes. But by the time I left the house and returned later that afternoon, Blackie wound up a corpse or is it forpse and my son raced out the front door holding his beloved friend in a napkin to show me the evidence that his fish had in fact bit the dust.

Before I had a chance to investigate, Dylan decided to give Blackie a burial at sea - flushing his lifeless body away to his final resting place - somewhere amidst the sewer system of Southern Westchester. As I searched the house to find my cat, I was surprised to find that I was named the prime suspect in the crime.

It seems that the night before Blackie's demise, I decided to change the water in the fish bowl because it was quite cloudy and downright gross. I grabbed the net, swooped the two fish out of the bowl, deposited them in a lovely vase filled with room temperature water and then rinsed out their domicile, filled it back up with water and plopped them back inside.

According to the lead investigator on the case, my husband - it seems as if my tinkering with the water could have shocked poor Blackie into his premature death. But does that make me guilty of fish-icide or was it just fish-slaughter? Either way, my son lost a new friend, my cat is on the prowl for Goldie, the lonely fish that is now hidden away in the bathroom and I'm afraid to change the water for fear of being blamed for another unfortunate case of aquacide.

Who knew that taking care of fish was so tough? It's a good thing we didn't buy a dog.