Karate—the perennial backup sport for kids who weren’t coordinated enough to play soccer. And what is a more direct comparison to an uncoordinated child than the average house pet. Well, I have attempted to teach karate to five of the noblest of man’s varied best friends and, as my father said to me after every little league game, several spelling bees, and one particularly disastrous bring-your-child-to-work day, “it was all an abysmal failure.”

Here are the top 5 pets that despite my very best efforts, are sadly not ninja.

5. Snake
I never had particularly high expectations for the snake, despite it being the inspiration for an entire kung fu movie fighting style and the icon behind Cobra Kai’s philosophy. Kata demo afte kata demo the snake failed to learn anything, save for deception and treachery, which it already had a huge head start on because it’s a snake. Still, its body made a pretty decent karate belt to hold the whole gi together.

4. Parrot
I’d have thought a parrot would be better at learning karate than most birds. I mean, their whole deal is that they’re supposed to copy whatever you tell them, I figured I could apply the same logic to its muscle memory. But all this jerk did was dance around his oversized seed bell while repeating the phrase “Do some goddamn karate already, you smartass bird!” He lacked discipline is what I’m saying.

3. House Cat
I thought this one was basically a layup. The world’s foremost karate masters pride themselves on having cat-like reflexes, so I figured he was born halfway there! Here’s the thing about cats, they have no loyalties. Sure, though their lithe bodies and ability to always claw at the most vulnerable part of your body may lend themselves to karate in theory, without the essential respect for their sensei. Fluffy pissed all over my house, scratched the hell out of my furniture, and worst of all refused to take his shoes off on my matt. He’s a cat, he’s not even supposed to wear shoes at all!

2. Tarantula
A tarantula felt like it should be an obvious choice to learn karate. Like, long limbs mean strong kicks, right? What I failed to take into account is that, despite being larger than most spiders, they are still relatively easy to kill with a shoe. And though karate is usually taught barefoot, at some point this is gonna spill out into the real world and where the hell is it gonna be then? Splattered all over the wall of a PetCo aquarium display? Actually yes, which brings me to my next house pet…

1. Goldfish
Well I’ll say this for Goldy, he tried his little fish heart out. But without hands or feet or a memory that lasts more than eleven seconds his karate move selection was always gonna be very limited. Still, I think he did manage to learn a couple of defensive moves, like hiding behind the 19th-century scuba diver figurine in his tank, before I blasted that tarantula all over the glass and he had a little fish heart attack. Again, apologies to everyone at PetCo for my behavior, and I promise this will all go so much better when I try to teach all those rescue dogs to play poker.