Today is an important day as Noodle's parents are meeting to discuss who will have custody of her. I'm keeping my finger's crossed as yesterday I realised how happy she makes me. I went round to Noodle's house and there she was, sat in the window like the old days. When she saw me, she jumped up all bonkers-dog-like all over me and licked my hands and then followed me around.

What about me in this Noodle custody battle? I need my Noodle therapy too.

I am actually being quite sensible for me and have started thinking about Noodle contingency plans. After learning about my friend Kat's pet snail Brian, I thought that maybe we could get some fish with snails for company to try and recreate the whole pond experience. And, then today, I got stupidly excited because someone on Freecycle is giving away some baby Giant African Land snails (they can grow to 25cm!) and I thought I'd found the answer to my pet problem.

But then we did some research and found that they are banned in the US and can cause loads of damage if they escape. Obviously, under normal circumstances they are unlikely to escape but the risk is considerably higher with me taking care of them. So I thought they wouldn't be the best pets. Also, they can't really look after themselves and need quite a bit of TLC. Actually, isn't that true for all pets? Maybe I'll get some fish (and water snails too, they must be easier to look after) in one of those self-cleaning tanks.

Do self-cleaning tanks actually exist or is that just a dream?