A Fish Tale

I had a wonderful Mother's Day. The weather was absolutely beautiful. The sky was perfect, the temperature was perfect, and the boys behaved (for the most part).
The four of us went to our new property and fished in our pond. We caught four very nice catfish. They were probably 3-5lbs apiece. We decided that three of them would have been more than enough to eat, so we put the last one back into the pond, and packed up and came home. We prepared the sink with some very cold water and was about to start the messy process of cleaning the fish. We brought them out of the ice chest and placed them into the sink and found that all three of them were still alive. We were amazed. They had been out of the water well over an hour and a half, but they were still going strong. Hubby looked at me and asked me if I really wanted to kill them? My answer was no. I don't know how to clean catfish. The problem was, he didn't want to kill them either. His heart just wasn't in it. He told me that he hated to kill them when, obviously, they were very determined survivors. So he asked the kids if they wanted us to kill them and eat them or put them outside in the goldfish pool overnight and take them back to the pond on Monday. They decided to let them go. So we got a leaf net from my pool and fished out the goldfish and placed them in our aquarium with the guppies. Then we put the three catfish in our goldfish pool in the back yard. We had a time keeping them in the water. They kept jumping out. We had to keep a very close eye on them. They stayed in our goldfish pool until Tuesday. Unfortunately, one jumped out overnight Monday, so the boys got to eat her. But the other two were safely returned to their home in our pond. Yesterday we took some catfish food out there and fed them. They boys loved doing that. There are probably around 65-70 catfish in the pond. I think they will eventually become pets, because Hubby and I don't have the heart to kill them. Oh well, that's why there's frozen Cod in the freezer, right?