A goldfish.

In the early 2000s, Ann Arbor's City Council debated an ordinance that included extensive regulation of animal cruelty, ranging from the number of pets a household could keep to the particular conditions required. Hours of debate on the ordinance spread across multiple Council meetings provided a new term for snarkily discussing the frivolity of a particular issue of public policy, when discussion was bogged down by an attempt to define what constituted a proper level of human companionship for goldfish.