Preuss Pets just celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, but the Old Town Lansing store's owner and namesake Rick Preuss has been taking care of animals his whole life.
"It started in a small town called Troutville where my mother decided to open a fish store in the middle of a very rural village in the middle of Pennsylvania," he said.
As a child, Preuss took care of the store’s guinea pigs but later became more interested in keeping fish.
"We had always had fish since I was a kid, of course, but my passions tend to flare when we can get both science and animals and nurturing all kind of pulled into one little, well, fish tank."
That ongoing interest in fish, and pets in general, led him to create his own store in mid-Michigan in the early 1980s.
There have essentially been two constants through every iteration of his business — a tortoise named Fred that Preuss got a year after the business opened and a grey catfish he won in an auction a few years later.
"I didn't know what this character was," Preuss said. "It was about eight inches long, kind of a real prehistoric-looking catfish with almost like blades on both the left side and the right side."
When Preuss put the catfish in a clear tank at one of the store’s previous locations, it was obvious that his name would be Hoover.
"He would pull in gravel in large volumes and just let it blast out his gill areas and just sift through that gravel to find any morsels of food opportunities he could," Preuss explained. "And it just looked like a vacuum sweeper."
Hoover is a South American catfish, most likely collected from a river like the Amazon but Preuss can’t know that for sure. But the now three-foot-long fish definitely has a personality.
"He's just a lumbering guy that just kind of is always there and always predictable, and somebody you can trust, and he can consume a lot of food. "
The centerpiece of Preuss’ Lansing store is its artificial river built specifically as a home for Hoover. It winds from the back of the store, goes by the bird room, past the cash registers before ending at the waterfall in the front of the building.
After opening the store in 2006, Preuss added another catfish, appropriately named Dyson, and more than a dozen koi.
Building the water feature provided a new opportunity for Preuss and his family to encourage interaction between the store’s guests and featured animals.
Preuss’ daughter was the one to figure out that Hoover would eat directly out of her hand.
"She was just playing around, and I think we were trying to feed the koi and then he came up and then she put her hand out, and he sucked the food right out of there," he explained.
Since then, the store has offered fish food for visitors to give to Hoover, Dyson and the koi in exchange for a small donation that goes to charity. They’re able to just toss their food in, but Preuss still hand feeds him sometimes.
"I don't think his eyesight is that great, so you got to get in there and kind of shake the food around and whatnot to get his attention," he said. "But once he sees who it is, he can get rather excited."
And for Preuss, Hoover has given his own family members an opportunity to strengthen the store and its mission, from his brother planning and building the river to his daughter coming up with the donation program for the fish food.
"It becomes a community in it of itself," he said.
"I think that's kind of the evolving spirit of Preuss Pets is that it in itself has become this destination location and this vibrant retail establishment that actually does something different and something special. "
Preuss thinks the nearly 40-year-old Hoover could be considered an elder, but the species can live decades more.
"It wouldn't surprise me that a catfish like that in the wild can live up to 50, 60, 70 years."
So, there is still plenty of time for more pet store visitors, both old and new, to get a chance to meet this Lansing icon.
