Goodbye Little Loach

The time has come for us to say goodbye to our Pakistani Loach (botia lohachata). Not to worry... he is still alive and healthy, but for over a year, he has been the only fish in our fishtank. Now that we are moving, Mom has decided not to go through the whole trouble of tearing down the fishtank and setting it back up just for one fish. When she had more time, she used to love keeping a nice fishtank... live plants, lots of fish, she even had a chemistry kit to test the water and everything. But now she just has too much else going on. Mom has found a really good home for him with a friend, and she is glad she knows he will be taken care of.


Mr. Loach was my first friend when I was a kitten. He also provided hours of entertainment. When I was small (like in the first photo here) Mom and Dad put a chair near the fishtank so I could look in more easily. Eventually I was able to get on top of the fishtank and make sure he was safe. Plus it was another neat way to look at him. Sometimes we would even nap together. Mr. Loach liked naps... and in fact would sleep on his side on the bottom of the tank. People who didn't know about him would often think he was sick or even dead! Only one time did I try to get in and visit him. But I slipped and got very wet and decided it was better to have a friendship between the glass.


Somewhere Mom has a picture of Mr. Loach from when the fishtank was pretty and fancy, but of course she can't find it now. This is a picture of another Pakistani Loach on the web. He's not too big (only about three inches long), and has neat whisker things in the front of his face. Our loach is somewhere between 6 and 7 years old. In the wild, he most likely wouldn't live this long, but in captivity he may live up to 11 years!! Let's hope he does.

I will now close with a few more pictures of Mr. Loach and I having some fun together. These are not recent pictures... they are from before I was full-grown. I was about 7 or 8 months old in the pictures below (much younger in the pictures above!). Aside from my size, you can tell these are older pictures because the fish food was on top of the fishtank. This was before I found out how yummy fish food is and then it had to be stored in the refrigerator. You can click any pictures to make them larger!