EIGHT

Friends

The smells of smoked meats, funnel cake, grilled corn, sweaty humans, animal musk, and manure mingled at the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo in Texas. During a span of three weeks in March, more than two million visitors descended upon the many stages and arenas to watch live music concerts, tractor shows, animal auctions, and rodeos. Children with sticky hands, men in tight jeans, and women in cowboy hats roamed the grounds in search of another snack or the next event. In the main arena, thousands of patrons sat in the bleachers cheering the men and women taking their turns on a bucking bull. Away from the main festivities, a fifteen-year-old girl sat in a shadowed stable holding a three-hundred-pound pig and cried.

An only child, Alena Hidalgo grew up around animals in her hometown of Pearland, Texas, with dreams of becoming a veterinarian. When her high school offered her an opportunity to participate with Future Farmers of America (FFA) and learn about animals in agriculture, she jumped at the opportunity. The FFA is the largest technical and career student-education program in the United States, with almost eight thousand chapters in schools in all fifty states, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. Many schools revolve around their FFA programs, as did Alena’s. She thought the FFA would teach her how to care for animals.

On her first day with the FFA, an instructor took Alena and her classmates to a nearby barn where young goats greeted them. Rather than being taught how to interact with and care for the animals, the teacher instead told the students to evaluate and judge the goats as if they were carcasses hanging upside down in a butcher shop. “They didn’t teach us much about animals,” Alena tells me, “but if they did teach anything, it was about animals being dead.”

Despite this first introduction into animal husbandry, Alena was still excited about the chance to raise an animal, which came later in the course. A few days before this next phase of the program started, she ran home after school to tell her mother that she would get to raise a pig. When her mother replied that the pig will eventually be killed, Alena thought, Well, that is the way of the world. She told herself at least she would treat the pig kindly. Giving a pig a few months of a good life would be good enough, she thought. Then she met Chubbles.

Alena fell head over heels in love with the overweight pig. Chubbles was so large for his age that Alena’s teachers put him on diets, though to no avail. He was a big boy and he relished the food Alena gave him just as he seemed to relish every other part of his relationship with her. Every afternoon for months, Alena was in the school’s agriculture barn with Chubbles. If she wasn’t bathing him or cleaning his pen, she was snuggling with him. Chubbles would put his head on her lap, giving gentle snorts as she scratched his head and belly. Often, Alena would let him out of his pen so that he could run. They played chase where she would begin by running after him until Chubbles turned and chased her, making barking noises like a dog, she says. Like he was laughing.

Alena’s teachers weren’t happy about the time she spent playing with Chubbles. The other students were getting ready for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo in the spring. The livestock show was the culmination of the year’s course. At the show, FFA students would present their pigs before a panel of judges, who would score the pigs on their posture, build, and gait. The scores would influence the price the students could sell the animals for at the auction that followed. The higher the score, the higher the price.

In the weeks before the show, the students spent most of their days training the pigs in preparation for their thirty-second walk before the judges. The best way to train animals, according to the FFA teachers, was by whipping them. But Alena refused to whip Chubbles.

A few days before the show, one of Alena’s teachers noticed that Chubbles was not walking as a trained pig should. “Here, let me help you,” he said to Alena. He grabbed her whip, which she only pretended to use, and repeatedly beat Chubbles with the metal end. “He’s whacking my pig really hard and my pig starts crying,” Alena tells me. “I started crying and everyone was looking at me like, What is this girl doing because all these kids are so used to this.” Furious, Alena grabbed back the whip and told her teacher she was done.

Alena never returned for the training sessions. As other students spent their afternoons whipping their pigs into proper postures, Alena sat in her pen, playing with Chubbles, trying to comfort herself. She knew what was coming and she lived in a mental cloud, cushioned by a vague belief that, somehow, everything would be okay. Even so, a lump of unease had formed.

On the day of the livestock show, the lump solidified into full-fledged dread. Things happened so quickly that even today, Alena has trouble making sense of them. When her turn came at the show, Alena led Chubbles in front of the judges. Unlike the other students, she never used her whip. “Chubbles trusted me so much that he just wanted to walk by me,” Alena says. Despite his lack of training, Chubbles placed high in his category. Before Alena knew what happened, someone quickly bought Chubbles, handed her a check for $2,000, and took a group photo with Alena and Chubbles. “I didn’t know what was going on. They took a photo of me holding this award. I’m crying in this photo and it’s not a few tears—I mean like I’m crying. My parents are standing beside me, silently. I’m holding my pig, who’s starting to panic now, and the people kept telling me not to touch my pig. It’s not professional. So in the picture—the pig’s in front so you can’t see—but I’m touching him and petting him.” Alena didn’t have much time to comfort Chubbles. Immediately after the photo, Chubbles was taken onto a truck and driven away. That was the last time Alena saw him.

As Alena stood by her parents watching after the truck, another FFA student came up to her. “You got all this money and your pig was well placed,” he said. “Why are you crying?” Alena could not understand how he needed to ask such a question. Through her tears, she replied, “I just lost my friend.”

The FFA’s mission is to make “a positive difference in the lives of students by developing their potential for premier leadership, personal growth, and career success through agricultural education.” Alena’s FFA experience transformed her into a leader, but not in the way her teachers anticipated.

After losing Chubbles, Alena didn’t think she could continue with FFA. Her friend, however, convinced her that she would be giving an animal a better life than another student would. When the next school year started, Alena signed up with another piglet, whom she named Gizmo. Within the first week, Alena saw that there was something wrong with Gizmo. His bulging, red eyes oozed pus. She texted one of her teachers, pleading with him to take a look at Gizmo. The teacher didn’t come and, instead, texted back that Gizmo probably had wood shavings in his eyes. He instructed Alena to wash Gizmo’s eyes with water, which she did. The next day, there was no change in Gizmo’s eyes. Alena texted her teacher again who gave the same instructions. For more than a week, Alena washed Gizmo’s eyes repeatedly, yet the pus continued to flow. “I kept telling my teachers that they, you know, needed to come by and check on Gizmo,” she says, “and they said just keep washing. But I kept insisting something was wrong.” After a week, the teachers stopped answering Alena’s texts altogether. Finally, one of the teachers decided to walk by and take a look at Gizmo’s eyes. Alarm crossed the teacher’s face. “We need to get your pig to the vet,” she told Alena. “Immediately.”

By the time they took Gizmo to the animal hospital, it was too late. The veterinarian diagnosed Gizmo with a severe allergic reaction to the wood shavings in his pen. The inflammation scarred his eyes. Gizmo was blind.

Although Alena was outraged at her teachers for ignoring her pleas, there was nothing she could do now. While Gizmo recovered at the hospital, she turned her attention to another pig who needed her help. Alena befriended the pig who lived in the pen next to Gizmo’s and named her Kurtis. The student in charge of the pig’s care was rarely seen. As the days passed, Alena noticed that Kurtis was sleeping in her own urine and feces. In the evenings, Alena could hear Kurtis cry from hunger.

Alena told the FFA teachers about the pig’s neglect. They shrugged it off. One day, Alena found Kurtis lying in her pen, foaming at the mouth and panting heavily. She was overheating in the hot Texas sun. Fed up, Alena walked into the school building and confronted a teacher. “Mr. Ron, come look at this pig right now,” she said. When they walked into the barn, Mr. Ron looked at Kurtis and said, “Yeah, it’s overheating.”

“I’m like, ‘Yeah, I know,’” Alena tells me as her voice rises in remembered anger. “We need to do something. He says, ‘Well are you going to do something about it?’ And then he leaves. So I took this other pig out and I started giving her a bath and hosing her down. She was just the sweetest thing ever. I’ve never met a pig with that much personality. Her eyes were just so expressive.” Alena took matters into her own hands from then on. Every day, she fed and bathed Kurtis and cleaned her pen. All the while, she mentally prepared for Gizmo’s return from the animal hospital.

“Gizmo is usually so energetic,” Alena says, “but that day when he came back, he just plopped down in his pen. He looked so tired. It was a hard moment for me too, because my pig is blind.” Alena didn’t know what to do for Gizmo, but it seemed that Kurtis did. “Kurtis must have sensed something. She walked into Gizmo’s pen and started poking his belly with her snout. She lay beside him. It was obvious Gizmo was upset, and Kurtis just stayed with him the whole time.”

After that day, Gizmo and Kurtis became fast friends. Whether taking naps or playing chase, they were together as often as Alena could allow. “There were times when one of them would lie down and the other would just lie right down, too. It was just like if you have a friend, and there’s times when you could just chill out with them and you don’t have to do anything. It wasn’t easy for me to see because you’re raised to believe these animals are food and stuff, but they really were snuggling together, taking naps. They were happy just being together.”

As auction time neared, however, Alena panicked. Her loss of Chubbles still grieved her. She knew she would not sell Gizmo, but what about Kurtis? Kurtis was not her pig. She could not bear the idea of losing Kurtis or of separating her from Gizmo. Alena had approached the girl in charge of Kurtis and asked her not to sell the pig, but the girl refused. What was Alena to do?

Alena and her friend Kayree, who had also grown fond of Kurtis, made a decision. They were going to buy Kurtis. A few days before the livestock show, they started a crowdfunding page to raise money. The girls wrote on their page a heartfelt plea, asking for help to save their pig. In forty-eight hours, they raised $2,000. Just in time for the auction. Or so they thought.

At the show, rumors quickly spread about a girl who was trying to save a pig. Some people suspected the girl was Alena and did double takes when they saw her, whispering behind her back. Alena felt shunned, but her greater concern was for Kurtis. “I was sitting on the bleachers watching her turn in front of the judges,” Alena says. “Her keeper starts walking her, but Kurtis doesn’t know this girl. She never spent time with her pig. Since she was never trained, Kurtis isn’t walking in proper form. The girl gets angry and starts whipping Kurtis. And you could see it on Kurtis’s face. She was like, ‘What are you doing?’ The girl keeps hitting her so hard, and Kurtis is screaming.” Alena’s heart broke watching Kurtis cry. Immediately after the show, she ran up to the girl and implored her to let her buy Kurtis with the $2,000. It wasn’t enough. The girl sold Kurtis to a breeder for a higher price.

Since Kurtis was alive as a breeding pig somewhere out there, Alena didn’t give up. She still had the money. She and Kayree started a campaign to get Kurtis back. They emailed the FFA teachers, hoping to negotiate a way to buy Kurtis from the breeder. Their entreaties were ignored. Two weeks in, over the loudspeaker, the school principal called Alena into her office. “They never do that for any student over the whole intercom,” Alena tells me. “When I get to the principal, the counselor was there too. The principal told me—and I’m not exaggerating, this is word for word—she told me all animals want to die.”

Since that day, Alena felt the counselor’s eyes were always on her. She tells me, “The counselor started calling me into her office for doodling on my papers. I doodle on my papers, but I’ve never been called to the office before. I drew this little alien thing, and she says this thing looks like it’s going to touch itself inappropriately, and I just started laughing. I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ They kept calling me down for stupid things after that. They kept a file on me.”

The counselor and teachers bullied Alena. So did her classmates. They would snicker behind her back or outright call her names. But one classmate surprised her. “One of the kids came up to me, and he said, ‘Did you hear about that girl in FFA who’s trying to save a pig?’ He did not know it was me. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, what an idiot.’ He was making fun of it, and I let him have his fun. Then I said that kid was me. He looks at me, like, ‘Oh.’ Then he started telling me that he understood and he kind of tears up about his pigs. All of his friends are in FFA, and he told me that he couldn’t quit because he would lose his friends. It almost sounded like this kid was obligated to kill things to keep his way of life.” Since that conversation, Alena often wondered, how many other kids wanted to save their animals but were afraid to say so?

Alena couldn’t save Kurtis. However, she still had Gizmo to worry about. The school principal was not going to let her keep Gizmo at the barn much longer. Alena had to find Gizmo a permanent home. She and her friend Kayree contacted animal sanctuaries across the country to ask if any could take Gizmo. The sanctuaries were full. A month passed with no success. Alena was getting desperate.

One day, a church friend of Alena’s mother told her about a newly formed sanctuary only forty-five minutes away. Accompanied by her parents who fully supported her, Alena visited the Rowdy Girl Sanctuary in Angleton, Texas, ready to beg, if needed. They were given a tour of the grounds and met the founder, Renee King-Sonnen. After hearing Alena’s plea, Renee looked steadily at her and said, “We’re going to take your pig. And we’re going to love him.”

Dr. Anderson looks into a horse’s mouth. “Limo looks okay,” the veterinarian says aloud.

To me, Limo looks as nervous as a cat. The vet squeezes a dab of ivermectin dewormer paste into Limo’s mouth, who spits his tongue back and forth like a child given a nasty-tasting medicine. In the adjoining stall, two steers warily watch. Next, with remarkable speed, Dr. Anderson injects a series of vaccines for tetanus, West Nile virus, and rabies into the side of Limo’s neck. Limo buckles and neighs loudly. “For an alpha male, you’re a big baby,” Dr. Anderson says to him.

The first day of my weeklong stay at Rowdy Girl Sanctuary is a busy one. The veterinarian is making her quarterly visit to inspect, vaccinate, and treat the hodgepodge of animals who call these ninety-six acres home: one rooster, one goat, three ducks, four cats, four horses, nine dogs, twenty-four hens, forty-eight cows, and four pigs (including Gizmo). Add Renee King-Sonnen and her husband, Tommy, and you have one hundred domestic residents plus countless wild ones.

This morning, Kate, a sanctuary employee, Tommy, dogs Waylon and Sadie, and I are following the veterinarian as she examines each animal. After she’s done with Limo, Tommy releases him. Limo bolts to the other corner of the stall, neighing the injustices of his ordeal to anyone who will listen. The next horse is calmer about her medical visit. Dr. Anderson rubs her hand over the horse’s flank and abdomen. “She has a bit of a distended abdomen,” she says, “A body wall hernia on her side, probably from a kick. It will heal itself.”

After Dr. Anderson vaccinates the four horses, she turns her attention to the cows. As we enter the stall housing the two steers, Limo, who is still voicing his woes, quiets and turns back to watch us. It’s as if he knows he’s in the clear and can now watch the cows get tormented. The steers, one all black and the other with white legs, are big, weighing upward of 1,700 pounds each. I don’t know cows. I know cats, I know dogs, I know squirrels. Not cows, especially not mammoth male cows. With their sharp horns, the steers kind of scare me. Murray was severely malnourished when he was first rescued. He’s an old man of a steer now: ornery, distrustful. Still, Tommy smoothly encourages him into a corner of his stall. As Dr. Anderson injects Murray with several vaccines, Murray remains calm. His best friend, Big Bird, is another matter.

Somehow, Tommy is able to direct Big Bird out of the stall and into a green squeeze chute. Now comes the hard part. We try to coax him down the chute’s corridor so that we can close the two ends. Big Bird refuses. He crashes against the sides and bucks again and again. With all our body weight, Kate (who’s about my size), Tommy, and I lean against the openings at each end to try to secure the chute as much as possible. It shakes and rattles with Big Bird’s bashings. So do we. I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m nervous.

Murray, watching from his stall with concern for his friend, moos loudly. From the woods come five female cows who answer his calls. They moo back and forth, adding to the commotion. Sadie and Waylon run at our feet, barking. The rooster hollers. The goat bleets. The hens, well I’m not sure what they are doing, but they aren’t helping. There’s Tommy yelling, “Hold it! Hold it!,” Kate running back and forth, and I’m grinding my teeth. Everyone seems to be anxious and complaining. Except the horses, who appear to enjoy watching the ruckus.

Suddenly, Tommy yells, “Watch out!” Big Bird slams against the chute, knocking Kate down, and is free. I hustle out of his path, eyeing his sharp horns, and help Kate up. Tommy, Kate, and I turn to Dr. Anderson with the same question on our faces.

“I got him just before he bolted,” she says.

Phew! I don’t want to go through that again. I see Big Bird skulking off toward the female cows. They gather around him, lowly mooing, as if to say, “There, there, it’s all over now.” I wonder if the bovine ladies ever get together and roll their eyes at Big Bird’s fearfulness.

We rest for a few minutes, wipe our sweaty faces, and sip water before we hop into the Kawasaki MULE, an open-top off-road vehicle. Waylon sits in Tommy’s lap. Sadie, who’s too big for the vehicle, runs after us. Dr. Anderson carries a dart gun, loaded with vaccine. We drive across the sanctuary in search of Cinnamon, a cow, Tommy tells me, who hates confinement and needles. Don’t they all? I wonder, thinking of Big Bird. Tommy tells me that Cinnamon destroyed a stable when they tried to confine her before, but, he adds, “She really is a gentle cow.”

In his denim shorts, checkered short-sleeved shirt, and baseball cap, Tommy looks like he should be driving across a golf course or stomping over old battlefields with a metal detector in hand. For a man who would rather spend his retirement looking for Civil War buttons than chasing cows, he looks relaxed. As we bump along the muddy ruts, Tommy turns to me and grins. His blond caterpillar mustache wiggles. “We got the MULE. Got the gun. Got the dog. Kind of reminds me of my hunting days.” The sun glints off his eyeglasses as though he’s winking at a joke.

“You ever miss it?” I ask.

“When I first got this land. I killed only two deer. When you live with them . . . they’re here in the morning. They’re here in the evening. I’d sit out in the stand and I just didn’t want to kill them. I know them.”

We drive for a half hour looking for Cinnamon. We find groupings of other cows here and there, relaxing under trees or grazing, but can’t locate Cinnamon. I don’t mind. I’m enjoying the warm sun, the breeze, the smell of mesquite trees, of dust and healthy animals.

We find Cinnamon sunning in the outer pasture in the company of two other cows. Reddish brown in color, Cinnamon is a Brahman cow with a large camel-like hump on her back. Tommy pulls to a stop several feet away. With one blow into the dart gun, Dr. Anderson makes a clean shot. Cinnamon jumps up and runs several meters with the dart sticking into her flank. We follow her until the dart falls off, then we pick it up and ride back to the horse stall.

Dr. Anderson has one last patient. Kate holds Lulu the hen, while the vet examines the large, hard abscess at the bottom of Lulu’s right foot. Bumblefoot, an infection caused by staphylococcus bacteria, is common among chickens. With a scissor, Dr. Anderson pierces open the abscess and cleans it out. Lulu squirms and cries out a soft ooohooo ooohooo noise. “I know,” Dr. Anderson murmurs to Lulu. “It’s okay. I know. You can peck me.” As the pus drains, Kate feels sick and hands Lulu to Tommy to hold. When drainage is complete, Dr. Anderson coats Lulu’s foot with silver sulfadiazine cream, a topical antibiotic, and wraps a bandage around the wound. “Keep this bandage on for a week,” she tells Tommy. “And keep her in her coop.”

Lulu doesn’t like this last order at all. As soon as Tommy carries her to her coop, Lulu tries to make a run for the door. But another hen gets in her way and squeezes out the door before Tommy shuts it. From inside the coop, we can hear the fifteen or so hens squabbling. “They’ll calm down,” Tommy says to me, “till dinner time.”

I look at the clock on my cell phone. It’s already late afternoon. Renee has been away, driving about town running errands. As I wait for her return, I walk over to Murray, standing alone in his stall. Big Bird is still off somewhere with a group of ladies who are probably consoling him. I stop a few feet away from Murray so he won’t feel cornered. “Hey, Murray,” I say, with my hand stretched out. Murray stands against the far wall, eyeing me with suspicion. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I plead. “Come on, big boy.” I stand there for fifteen minutes, arm reaching, murmuring nice things to Murray. He gets down on the ground, lowers his head as though for a nap, but keeps one eye open, watching me.

I give up. Renee has arrived now and walks toward me carrying a guitar. Silver bracelets jangle on her arms. “Aye-shur,” she calls out, “wanna come on down with me to sing with the cows?”

Not to the cows, but with them. That’s an invitation I’ve never had before.

I’m not into hippie stuff. Although I don’t want to see animals hurt, I never aspired to commune with the cows. I look at Renee’s big, enticing smile, though. Why not? We trudge along a dirt road to one of the outer pastures and find a group of mother cows with their babies and some aunts, too, I think. Big Bird is with them.

“Woop woop woop!” Renee calls. “Houdini! Lucky! Raaawdy Giiirl!”

Renee spreads out a blanket and we plop down. Two black cows walk right up to Renee and bump heads with her. “This is Rowdy Girl,” Renee says, petting the cow with a diamond patch of white fur on her forehead. “And this here is her baby, Lucky. Everyone thinks I named the place after me, that I’m Rowdy Girl. She’s my first girl. The one who started it all.”

Renee plucks her guitar and starts singing, “Who’s going next in the re-e-e-e-e-e-e-d trailer! Who’s goin’ on down the rooaaad?”

Hmm, I don’t yet know the significance of this song, but it sounds rather mournful to me. Fortunately, Renee follows this song with a more cheery tune. As Renee sings, the other cows come closer. About twenty cows and calves take turns mooing with the song. It’s as though they actually are singing with Renee.

As their mothers watch, two brown-and-white spotted calves walk up to me and nudge me. “They want to play with you,” Renee tells me. The calves continue to bump their velvet heads against mine until they topple me over. I laugh.

Renee laughs along. “Ain’t they just daaarlins’?” As the cows continue to gather around us, Renee says to me, “I never in a million years could of seen this coming. First sanctuary ever from a former cattle ranch.”

But the sanctuary nearly didn’t come to life. And Tommy and Renee’s marriage almost died.

Tommy and Renee’s ranch-style house overlooks much of the sanctuary. In their living room, I sit on the couch, flanked by two dogs. They drool on my lap as they snore away. Another dog squirms onto my lap. On the wall above us, where deer and elk heads used to hang, are landscape reproductions. Tommy has his feet up in his easy chair. Bullet the cat drapes over the back of the chair, licking Tommy’s face. Renee, as frenetic as ever, fusses back and forth between the living room, the kitchen, and her office. The malty aroma of Assam tea curls up from my mug. My second night here and I feel like I know this place.

Renee grabs a bottle of Zeal, a nutritional drink, and joins us. Tommy and Renee married twice. “I met her in the early nineties,” Tommy tells me. “She was a country music singer in a bar.” I recall the kitchen poster of Renee from those days. Big, permed hair. Puffed neon-blue sleeves. Tight, metallic-silver pants and silver boots, like someone from a Flash Gordon comic.

After a few years into their first marriage, Renee and Tommy’s opposite personalities led to a divorce. However, they kept seeing each other around town. Tommy was a chemist for Dow Chemicals, and Renee sold real estate. By then, Renee’s hair had shrunk and her clothes had loosened, but her country-music-star personality still mesmerized Tommy. After ten years of running into each other in Pearland, Texas, Tommy and Renee remarried. There was one major difference this time, though: Renee had to move to Angleton and live on Tommy’s cattle ranch. He had bought the ranch as supplemental income for his retirement. Renee moved in, but she didn’t share her husband’s enthusiasm for the ranch.

Renee reaches for her Zeal. When I earlier asked if she had any tea for my afternoon caffeine kick, she said, “Why don’t you try Zeal? It’s got all the an-tie-oxidants and vitamins and will give you all the energy boost you need.” She sounded like a commercial, which shouldn’t surprise me. She sells Zeal as a small side job. I dubiously eyed the bottle of Tropic Dream Zeal drink mix on the counter. “Uh, I’ll stick with the tea, thanks.”

Renee takes a long sip of her drink, smacks her lips as though to tell me look what you missed out on, and says, “When I got here, I just didn’t want to have anything to do with the cows. I had no interest in them.”

“So what happened?” I ask, blowing into my teacup.

“Tommy told me about a calf that needed a momma. She was a little bouncing thing, real rowdy, that’s how she got her name Rowdy Girl. I bottle-fed her, twice every day. And it was like I took a pill and went down a rabbit hole. I was feeding her and all of a sudden I would go down this place in my mind where I could see all the other cows now. I could see their babies and I could see them. I never noticed them before. I started caring.”

She takes another sip. “I named the cows. I named Rowdy—”

“I told you not to do that,” Tommy interrupts.

“I know that,” Renee replies to him. Then to me, “He kept telling me not to name them. I had to go back through the rabbit hole and be a rancher’s wife again. But then the red trailer came.”

Tommy made extra pocket change by breeding the cows and selling their calves. On the days the red trailer arrived, he and a friend would round up the calves, load them onto the trailer, and drive them away. Unable to bear children, Renee became acutely sensitive to the plight of the cows and the loss of their children.

“Aye-shur, it was horrible,” she says. “The momma cows were bawlin’. I would go inside to get away, but I could still hear the moms screaming. Their babies were being taken away. And the babies—they just stood in the trailer, not knowing what was going on. The mommas would follow the trailer as far as they could. And when the trailer turned the corner, they turned the corner too, along the fence line. They stood by the road watching the trailer leave, screaming bloody murder. It was horrible. I just couldn’t believe we were doing this. I would just shake my head and I would just scream, ‘How can we be doing this, how can we be doing this?’ And Tommy would say, ‘You better suck it up and get used to it.’”

Tommy says, “That’s when Renee went crazy.”

A cat jumps onto Tommy’s lap. Buddha. Tommy immediately wiggles around to make room for him. “What do you mean, ‘crazy’?” I ask him, watching his arms instinctively wrap around Buddha.

Tommy looks at Renee. “You want to tell her?”

“No.” She smiles. “I know you love telling this part.”

I look at Tommy. He says, “She went out and put down little markers.”

“To memorialize the animals,” Renee adds.

Tommy lets out a long, long sigh. “Yeah, she went out there with sage. And I’d tell her, ‘What are you doing out there?’ She was moanin’ all kinds of stuff—”

“I was chanting, with my sage, I was—You okay? You’re making funny noises.”

I can’t help it. The laughter I try to hold back bursts free.

“I know.” Renee smiles again. “I know. But you have to know. This was all new to me. I was feeling so much . . . all of a sudden. I was out there chanting. I was crying. I was begging for forgiveness.”

Tommy looks up to the ceiling. “Didn’t make me feel very good.”

I ask Tommy, “How many times did the trailer come?”

“’Bout ten or twelve times. But it got worse.”

“How did it get worse?”

Renee answers for Tommy. “I started calling him murderer.”

I glance at Tommy with understanding. He looks at me and shrugs. Poor man. Tommy is the stark opposite of Renee. Where he is calm, Renee is charged. Where he is easygoing, Renee is determined. All Tommy wanted at this stage of his life was to settle down and retire. Renee’s newfound empathy broke his peace.

One of the dogs walks in from the kitchen and puts his paw on Renee. With her hand on his head, she says, “And I knew Tommy didn’t like it. When I was saying this stuff to him, I knew that it was hurting his feelings. I could see it in his face, the way he was looking at me, like, ‘How dare you go there with me,’ because I called him a murderer. Because I knew he loved animals.”

“But I countered her,” Tommy says. “I said, ‘Wait a minute. You’ve got a Chick-fil-A sandwich in your hand and you’ve got groceries in there with hamburgers and steaks, and you’re telling me I’m murdering those cows? I know what I’m doing. You’re the one that doesn’t know what you’re doing.’”

I turn to Renee. “So he was telling you that you were a hypocrite for getting upset. How did you react?”

“Every time he would say that to me it would cut through my heart because it was true. It was true.”

“She loved Chick-fil-A sandwiches,” Tommy says.

“I did. And I loved prime rib. And I loved all that bacon. Now my inside matches my outside. Both of us”—she nods at Tommy—“I feel whole now. But what happened back then was I started feeling very split. I loved my husband. I wanted to respect his livelihood, his choices about our retirement, what we were doing. But I just couldn’t suck it up.” When the red trailer came and carried calves away in December 2014, Renee reached a breaking point. “After that trailer went, I started watching all these slaughterhouse videos. I was in my office crying.”

Tommy adds, “She’d be in there crying, and I’d be going, ‘Renee quit watching that crap.’ She’d be crying so loud I couldn’t hear the TV.”

“I couldn’t stop,” Renee says. “I would go deeper and deeper into the abuse. It’s like I had to feel everything, because all my life, I hadn’t felt anything. I forced myself to feel.” As Renee’s compassion for the cows grew, so did her anger towards Tommy. And his anger towards her. They fought. They screamed at each other almost daily. Divorce seemed inevitable. Again.

Renee says, “Tommy kept asking me, ‘What do you want me to do? What do you want me to do?’ He was mad at me because I was taking his livelihood. I was taking his identity.”

Renee didn’t know how to answer Tommy. As the weeks ticked by, Renee went online reading about animal sanctuaries. “One day,” she says, “I looked outside and I saw the cows, and I thought, Gosh, all we have to do is change our perception.” Instead of seeing a cattle ranch, Renee saw a sanctuary of her own. She went back inside, found Tommy, and said to him the last thing he expected. She asked him, ‘Why don’t you just sell the cows to me?’

Tommy rolls his eyes. “When she said that to me—I won’t tell you exactly what I said—but I said something like, ‘That’s blankety blank crazy. You’re stupid. There’s nothing in Texas like that. That’s something that happens in California or New York.’”

Despite Tommy’s ridicule, Renee started a fund-raising campaign, and in six months she raised $36,000. With that money and a reluctant agreement by Tommy to lease the land to her for $1 for two years, a sanctuary was born. Their marriage was still on the brink, though. Renee says, “You can just imagine, me and Tommy are still together. We’re not divorced, and I’m buying his cows. I had taken away his life. You can imagine the tension in this relationship.”

Tommy caresses Buddha’s feet. “I told myself I wasn’t going to get divorced a third time—I was married once before Renee.”

Even though Tommy resolved to fight for their marriage, the hurtful words he and Renee threw at each other cut deep. They lived under the same roof, but separately. On her laptop day and night, Renee read about Howard Lyman, a fourth-generation rancher who became an animal and environmental activist. Lyman never opened a sanctuary, but Renee hoped he might be able to provide advice as an ex-cattle rancher to an ex-cattle rancher’s wife. She tried for weeks to contact him. Then on Christmas evening, a small miracle happened. Lyman answered her phone call.

“Hello. Mr. Lyman?” she asked into the phone.

“This must be Renee,” he answered.

“How did you know?”

“Well, you called me and emailed me a couple of times now.”

With the phone in her hand, Renee walked into the back of the house, away from the gathered family, and poured her heart out to Lyman. She cried over the cows. She cried over her marriage. After hearing her tale, Lyman said to her, “Renee, I’m going to tell you something. You’re going to have to start loving your husband the way you do the cows.”

I stand outside of Murray’s stable, arm over the gate, trying to coax the steer to me. This is my eighth attempt over the past four days. For some reason, his past abuse touches me deeply, more so because he’s not cute and cuddly. He’s not the type of animal to normally arouse a person’s compassion. He’s sharp, angular, prickly. Like I was as a child. I really want to break through his mistrust. I have food this time, fresh grass. Murray backs away from me, huffing and snorting like a horse. He then watches me, as if in defiance. As if to say, “Seriously, do you think that old trick with food is going to work on me?” No, it doesn’t work on Murray. But I know someone else it will work on.

I find Gizmo in the pigpen with his head on Alena Hidalgo’s lap. She’s homeschooled now, freed from the bullying at her high school. She tells me she’s the happiest she’s ever been since joining the FFA program. When Gizmo turned a year old, the sanctuary held a birthday party for him. Alena was the guest speaker. She was nervous about speaking, yet as she cried in front of a large audience describing the loss of her friends Kurtis and Chubbles, she brought the crowd to tears. For the first time since her troubles started, she experienced a sense of belonging. She no longer had to conform to what others expected of her. She no longer had to hide her love for all animals.

Alena has been visiting Gizmo every Friday afternoon since she first brought him to the sanctuary two years ago. She feeds Gizmo, brushes him, bathes him, and plays with him. Most of the time, they simply enjoy each other’s company as they are doing now. Two other pigs, Roux and Penny, relax nearby. As with Gizmo, Penny was brought over by a former FFA student who couldn’t bear having her slaughtered. The three pigs are good friends, though not as close, Alena tells me, as Gizmo was with Kurtis.

With fresh grass in hand, I feed Penny and Roux, who trot over to greet me and enjoy their fill. Gizmo stays with Alena. I walk away from the pigpen toward the little fenced-in yard to find Pepper, a silver, black, and white pygmy goat. Like all of the animals who have joined the sanctuary since it first opened, Pepper is a rescue. After his human dad died from a heart attack, Pepper needed a new home. Pepper joined the sanctuary just a week ago. Until he gets used to his surroundings, Tommy and Renee keep him in this small yard. He shares the yard with another newcomer, Ivy, a pink and gray pig.

“Hi, Pepper,” I call out as I walk through the gate. “Hi, Ivy.” They both walk up to me. Pepper’s lips pull back, showing his teeth as though he’s grinning. He butts me urgently with his head. Ivy is more timid. I crouch down and let her sniff my hand. She allows me to rub her head, behind her ears. Move too suddenly, though, and she will scurry away. Touch her face and she will squeal in dismay. Rub her belly and she will murmur snoof, snoof in delight. I’ve never met a more emotional being.

Pepper has two perpetual goals: to eat and get out of the pen. He tries to rush past me through the gate. I grab the dunderhead just in time. I can’t let him out, but I can offer him food. I scoop a bucket of cereal—meant to be a rare treat—out of a bin. Oh boy, do Pepper and Ivy love Cheerios. They almost knock me over trying to get to it. I can’t help it. I give them more than I should. I just love seeing them so excited. After a few more scoopfuls, I close the bin. “No more!” I command, more to myself than to them. Pepper quickly loses interest in me. He jumps up on a barrel to watch the other animals in the sanctuary. On top of his soapbox, he bleats loudly. Based on the tone of his bleats, I gather he doesn’t think highly of the other animals.

I walk out of the yard. Off in the distance, I hear the rumble of Tommy’s tractor engine. I look up and watch him drive across the field with Waylon in his lap. Sadie runs after them. Tommy sees me from afar and waves with a big grin on his face. Tommy and Renee’s marriage survived their lowest point and they are now closer for it. Though Tommy would have preferred to retire at ease, he’s committed to his new journey with Renee and the family of critters they have acquired. Renee and Tommy now have a common goal, and their new partnership is based on trust, compassion, and understanding.

Three hens walk by, clucking back and forth to one another as they make their way to a destiny unknown to me. When I first arrived, I didn’t know one hen from another. Now I’m able to identify them individually. These three are always together. One is clearly the leader, perhaps the matron of the trio. The other two follow her about the yard, into the garage, into my car (after I forgot to close my door), always chatting, always inspecting things. I never knew chickens were so curious. Rearrange some cardboard boxes in the garage and these three are there, sniffing, pecking, jumping up on a table to get a better view. Seeing them walk past reminds me of Lulu.

Lulu, the chicken with the bandaged foot, shares her half of the chicken coop with fifteen or so hens. The other half of the coop holds a new group of chickens, who were previously used as bait to train cocks for fighting. The chickens first arrived in tiny shoeboxes. “They were so beat up, Aye-shur,” Renee told me when she first introduced me to them. “Now look how good they look.”

The coop is getting crowded. So is the rest of the sanctuary as more animals call this place home. With only three people working here—Tommy, Renee, and Kate—there are many repairs to be done. Fences need mending. Barns need building. I tell Patrick this over the phone, and he says he will return with me next time and help with the carpentry work.

After seeking permission from Renee, I find Lulu, who has been cooped up these past several days. “She needs some fresh air and sunlight, poor thing,” Renee told me. I scoop Lulu into my arms. Holding a chicken was new to me when I got here. After four days at the sanctuary, I do it like a pro. I take Lulu into Ivy and Pepper’s yard and let her down on the grass. Pepper and Ivy come out to meet their visitor. They watch for a few minutes as Lulu pecks at the ground, then wander away, seeing that Lulu doesn’t come with Cheerios. Lulu walks about like she’s looking for something in particular. I follow her.

Ah, she found it. On the other end of the yard is a patch of dry dirt. Lulu shuffles her feet in the dust for a few seconds and drops her bum down. She rolls on her back, kicks her feet in the air, and wriggles her fat little body from side to side as she stretches her wings. All the while, she coos. I’ve never seen a chicken take a dust bath before, but my god, she looks more blissful than anyone I’ve ever seen in my life.

Such a simple need. A little sunshine, the smell of sweet grass, some dust to roll in. And no one to hurt her.

The last night.

In the thick warmth, I lie in bed shivering. And waiting. Just waiting. I know it’s going to happen. The question that sits heavily as I lie here is When? Will it be in the next five minutes? Half hour? Or will I have to wait for two more hours?

The box fan drones and struggles against the heat in the open window. My bed is below the window, but the forced air blows right over me to another destination, as though I’m not even here. My armpits and palms are sticky. Still, I have the comforter pulled up to my chin. I’m hot and cold.

My nail-bitten fingers tap out the seconds. I count them as I learned during swim lessons. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand.

I hear a hearty male laugh outside my window, then another. They are followed by the sweeter laugh of a girl. Teenagers. Only two floors up, I can hear their voices at the back of the apartment building. I can’t identify them individually, but I have probably run into them in our building from time to time. Even though their exchanges are joyful, they scare me. I have seen what they do in the woods behind our building. Tonight is Saturday night. Time for cigarettes, drugs, and sex.

A small cough comes from the far wall. Then another cough and a rustle. I lift my head a little and peer over my blanket. My brother’s bed faces perpendicular to mine, against the far wall. Kamran fell asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. Now he stirs, mumbles something, and turns his back toward me. Is he awake? My fingers stop. I listen and wait. Then his gentle snores start up again. I put my head back down. Seventeen one-thousand.

I don’t need to look over at the third bed, which is also perpendicular, but against the same wall as mine. Like my and Kamran’s beds, it has a twin-size mattress and box spring, a metal frame, cheap tan sheets, and blue quilts. There are no headboards. My mom tried to make the room cozy for us by sewing a different colorful pillow for each bed. Mine is my favorite color, aqua blue, my brother’s is forest green, and my sister’s is orange. Tonight, though, the orange pillow is not on its rightful bed. In its place is a brown one with bleach stains. Sahar took her treasured orange pillow into the bedroom next door, which she is sharing with my parents and my second sister, who is younger still. Like last night, our guest will sleep in Sahar’s bed.

The smell of grease from the fried pakoras—my favorite snack—lingers in the air. We had a family get-together tonight. Crowded into the small living room of our apartment, cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and family friends all shared a large dinner in honor of our visitor.

My brother and sisters enjoyed those pakoras with our older cousins. But I stayed outside for hours today and missed out. There are probably still a few left in the kitchen. Mom always makes so much. She would rather have too much food than have people leave her table wanting. My mouth salivates as I think about dipping the pakoras in ketchup and tasting that sweet, tangy sauce with the spicy potato fritter. But I won’t leave the bedroom, not while he is still out there.

Thirty-seven one-thousand. Thirty-eight one-thousand. To distract myself, I look up at the opposite wall above my brother. A Jaws movie poster bandages the three-foot-long crack in the basic beige–painted apartment walls. Ever since the movie came out, Kamran has been obsessed with sharks. He saves most of the quarters, dimes, and nickels he gets from odd jobs to collect all things shark. Shark books, shark drawings, shark models, shark posters. They are misunderstood creatures, he says, and one day he wants to be a marine biologist and save them. I don’t know. I haven’t seen the movie, but the shark in the poster sure looks scary to me. A pretty blonde swims, unsuspectingly, as the shark lurks beneath the surface. Is the shark going to pull her down? How long can she last underwater? How long can I?

Fifty-six one—The bedroom door slowly opens. I stiffen. Against my brother’s snores, against the loud buzz of the fan, against the sounds of my parents settling down in the room next door, even against the yells of reveling teenagers outside, my ears have been trained, and I can still hear the soft pad of his footsteps on the parquet floor. Instead of the sweet ketchup, I now taste something sour. His pajamas rustle and my heart beats with each step as he makes his way closer and closer toward me.

As usual, I close my eyes and pretend to be asleep. The padding stops at my bed. I clench my hands so tightly that they hurt. I feel the pull of my blanket until I am exposed. I then feel the weight of his body as it climbs atop mine. Something wet drips onto my neck. His breath is hot in my ear as he tugs on my yellow nightgown, which clings to my knees. He pulls it above my waist. He breathes faster as his hands wander along my thighs.

I don’t want it. Not again. “Stop it,” I whisper.

Talup’s hands keep moving. Did he hear? I say it again, a little louder: “Stop it.” He freezes. This time he did hear. I think he’s surprised. But my surprise is even greater than his. Never before, in all the years we both went through this scenario again and again and across two continents, had I uttered a single word of protest, let alone two. Every night before, I lay still, remained silent, and pretended to be someplace else. But not this night.

Stop it.

I had essentially said these words to Dave to protect Sylvester. And now, on this night, I’m saying them for me.

I hold my breath. Talup’s heavy weight lifts off me. I don’t look, but I hear his footsteps retreat to the empty bed. The springs of the thin mattress creak under his weight. I exhale and pull my nightgown back down. This will remain my favorite nightgown for a long time to come. Tonight and every night from now on, I’m on dry land.

On the warm grass, as I watch Lulu the chicken, Ivy the pig comes and sits besides me. Her snout sniffs the air.

“Well, Ivy,” I say to her, “what should we do now?”

She looks up at me. Snoof, snoof, she replies.

I recall that Alena described playing chase with her pigs. I haven’t played chase since a child, but I feel a little like a child here, among the animals. They unlock an innocence I haven’t felt for many years. Perhaps ever.

I hop up. “Ivy!” I call out, “Come on girl!” I run a little away from her and hide behind the wooden shed that is her home. I look back toward her. “Ivy!” I call again.

Rook, she responds. She does a little jumping dance and runs after me. It actually works! I keep calling her name as I run around the shed and she chases me. Round and round we go, until I run out of breath. I plop on the ground, laughing. She stops too, walks up to me, sniffs my hand, says roooook and walks to the other side of the shed. I get up and follow her. A nest of hay rests under a small opening in the side of the wooden structure. Ivy plops down into her nest and squirms her body around several times until she finds the best spot. She tucks her nose into the warm hay, lets out a deep sigh, closes her eyes, and falls asleep. For the next half hour, I sit beside Ivy with my hand on her head. Sharing her serenity.

How do we achieve health? This question has plagued me ever since I first recognized my depressions, long before I became a doctor. Even after, the confines of medicine didn’t give the answer. Although I agreed with it, the World Health Organization’s definition of health as a “state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being” never gave guidance as to how to reach it. Sitting here watching Ivy, though, I come closer to an answer.

The path to health, especially mental and social health, lies in our empathetic relationships with others. During my depressions, I am completely alone. I fall into an isolated mental void, cut off into a seemingly endless spiral of distress, grief, and agony. But my relationships with others play a strong role in guarding me against these afflictions. And these connections, reinforced through kindness and understanding, arm me to better command my own fate. As I have seen with so many others, I am not alone in this. When we feel connected is when we are our strongest.

Empathy empowers. With empathy comes conviction, comes confidence, comes courage. Without empathy, most of the folks I met and learned about over these past few years would not have changed their own lives—or the lives of others—for the better. Without empathy for mother cows mourning the loss of their children, Renee might never have had the conviction to open a sanctuary. Without her empathy for Tommy and his for her, she might never have had the confidence to achieve it. Without empathy for Sylvester, I would not have braved Talup. Through Sylvester’s abuse, I came to recognize my own for what it was. Through empathy, the stark divide between human and animal blurred, and, at some level, I understood that Sylvester’s fight was my fight. My fight was his.

All forms of abuse share a commonality. They hide behind silence. They unmask through voice. My empathy for Sylvester taught me to speak up for him and that gave me the strength to change the course of my life as well.

Stop it.

It‘s amazing the power two little words can have. To me, they said I would longer doubt my self-worth. No longer obey another’s rules. No longer assume the answers others give me. To Talup, they said I would no longer keep quiet. Two words changed my life. They were the hardest things I had ever said, but they set me free.

With empathy comes the empowerment to demand a better world. For ourselves and for others. One with less grief and more joy. But to achieve such a world, isn’t it imperative to include animals? Shouldn’t we extend our arms and bring animals into our circle of empathy?

We go to great lengths to separate ourselves from other animals. We tell ourselves animals don’t laugh (rats do), don’t get pessimistic (pigs do), don’t use tools (crows do), don’t understand time (scrub jays do), don’t do math (chickens do), don’t trick others (squirrels do), don’t feel empathy (mice do), don’t pass on culture (chimpanzees do), don’t show interest in their dead (elephants do), don’t console each other (voles do), don’t use language (prairie dogs probably do), and don’t love. Seriously? If we are honest, we will admit that what we say about other animals says more about us than the animals.

If there is a trait that truly distinguishes us from other animals, though, it’s this: No other species is as capable of self-deceit as humans. We master the act. We paint over the stark, white negative spaces on the canvas, even if by doing so, we conceal the larger truth of the landscape. We ignore what affronts our worldview. We disbelieve what we can’t ignore. We rationalize what we can’t disbelieve. These things happen. It’s necessary. It’s not as bad as we think. And most dangerous of all, it’s normal.

Normal whispers sweet nothings into our ears while it steals our empathy.

It is the same mind-set that encourages cruelty toward animals and toward other humans. Normalcy need not hold us prisoner, though. We can free ourselves to recognize that humans and animals largely share the same struggle—the need for safety, comfort, and a gentle hand. The good news is that the solution to our struggles is the same. Empathy for animals is the natural, inevitable extension of our empathy for each other.

Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan noted that “although humans inherit a biological bias that permits them to feel anger, jealousy, selfishness, and envy, and to be rude, aggressive or violent, they inherit an even stronger biological bias for kindness, compassion, cooperation, love and nurture—especially toward those in need.” Our neurological wiring creates a positive feedback loop that encourages our empathy to grow. In other words, the more we practice empathy, the stronger it becomes.

Our reach for animals is lengthening. We are increasingly recognizing the love and healing that friendships with animals can bring us. Humans now view wild animals that were traditionally vilified in a different light. Animals such as wolves, vultures, rats, bats, and even sharks are more popular today than they once were. Some researchers suggest that the ways in which Americans value wild animals are shifting toward a view that considers wildlife “as part of an extended family, and deserving of caring and compassion.” The increasing media attention to the loss of species and the plight of animals raised for food and used in experiments reflect our increasing concern for them.

We are acknowledging the interconnectedness of our lives with other animals. Their well-being is not separate from ours. On the contrary, we share the same fate.

Moving forward, how we choose to be with animals will depend on how willing we are to be with them. Not as predator and prey, not as master and servant. But as kin, as partners, and as friends, strolling shoulder to shoulder along the dips and rises that stretch before us. We lose nothing when we do so. What we gain is our health, our happiness, our humanity. And friendships that are irreplaceable.

As I sit here beside Ivy, our sun slowly slumbers. One by one, the millions of suns from faraway worlds wink awake and greet me. I listen to everyone settling down for the night. In her sleep, Ivy snorts. From the garage, Renee and Tommy chuckle over something. In the trees overhead, birds rustle. In their pond, the ducks quack. The chickens cluck, the cows moo, the horses neigh, the dogs snuffle. Immersed in this shimmering and humming, I am reminded of Mozart’s “Piano Concerto 21.” In the contented voices of humans and animals, I hear a symphony of beauty.

Charger just arrived. A brown baby cow who looks like a teddy bear, Charger’s human parents hadn’t the heart to see him killed after their FFA son lost interest in him. Charger steps out of his trailer with unsteady feet after his long drive. “Moo-ooooh!” he says as he looks around his new home. He calls again. “Mooooo-ooooooh!” He invests his body and soul into his two-syllable moos.

From the east pasture, twenty cows answer Charger. Male, female, young, old. They make their way out of the trees and line up against the fence with curiosity. In succession, they stick their heads through the fence and touch Charger, nose to nose. Welcome, they say, to their new friend.

I leave Charger and the other cows and walk toward the main grounds. With my back against a fence, I settle down on the ground and close my eyes. I relax into the music of the cows and think about Sylvester. After my confrontation with Dave, we never again talked about his hurting Sylvester. But over many years, I had often wondered if he regretted how he treated Sylvester. Did he ever question normal? It was during our last moments with Sylvester when these questions were answered.

I was nineteen years old and reading on the front porch of my parents’ home when Dave’s car pulled into our driveway. Dave had often visited our home in Vienna, Virginia; but on that day, I immediately knew something was wrong. When he stepped out of his car, his long, lanky body didn’t completely unfold.

When I met him by his car, I saw grief etched in his face. “Sylvester is sick,” he told me, his voice faltering. “He has liver failure and he’s dying. The vet told me he only has a few more days.” He looked up at the bronzed plum tree leaves overhead. “I came straight here.”

I looked into the backseat of Dave’s car and saw Sylvester huddled on a blanket. My god, he was so skinny! I could see his rib cage and his eyes were yellowed and sunken, his stomach bloated.

“I’m putting him to sleep tomorrow,” Dave said. “Will you come with me?”

The next afternoon I found Dave in the parking lot outside the animal hospital. He waited for me so that we could take Sylvester in together. I asked for a few moments with Sylvester first. I wanted one last time with him before we entered the cold, sterile environment of the hospital. I stepped inside Dave’s car and kneeled on the floor. Sylvester’s eyes looked at mine and he thumped his tail against the seat using the last reserves of his energy. I rested my head against his and inhaled. The car smelled like him—his musky, warm scent. I tried to ignore the smell of urine and feces and the acrid smell of sickness. I buried my hands in his fur and stroked his soft belly. As tears rolled out of my eyes, Sylvester licked my face. His last time to comfort me. When all I wanted to do was comfort him.

When I stepped out of the car and nodded to Dave, he took a deep breath, wrapped a blanket around Sylvester, and scooped him into his arms. Sylvester was so weak, he put up none of his usual resistance when taken to the vet. Dave cooed to Sylvester as he carried him. “That’s a good boy. Good boy. Vesty, my good boy.”

We walked into the lobby where there were other visitors waiting with a menagerie of animals—cats, hamsters, dogs, a cockatiel. They hushed their voices when we entered and looked at us with understanding. They knew what we were there for. There is a certain look on people’s faces when they go to euthanize their animals. It’s grief mixed with resolution, warring with dread.

We were led into an examination room where the veterinarian and an assistant were waiting for us. They greeted us with kindness. The metal examination table was cold and they offered a towel, but we kept Sylvester in his soft blue-and-tan blanket. To distance myself from the coming procedure, I became clinical. I watched as the vet took Sylvester’s left hind leg and felt around for a good blood vessel. They had already drawn the syringe with pentobarbital and, despite my attempt at distraction, I winced when the needle pierced Sylvester’s skin. The vet drew back a little on the syringe to check for blood. Sylvester’s blood diffused into the pentobarbital. His life entered death. Satisfied he was in the vein, the vet pushed the syringe. I watched the syringe empty. Death entered life. It galloped the course of Sylvester’s body—to his heart, lungs, arms, legs. When the messenger entered the base of the brain, it announced it was time to turn off the lungs’ breathing, to stop the heart’s pumping. It was time to shut down.

I stepped back and allowed Dave to have the last moments with Sylvester. His arms wrapped Sylvester’s body and his hands cradled Sylvester’s head. “It’s all right, Vesty. Papa is here. Papa will always be with you,” he whispered. Sylvester’s head drooped. Dave lowered it on the blanket. Sylvester was gone.

Dave threw himself over Sylvester’s body and shook and cried as if asking for forgiveness.

“We’ll step out and give you time alone with him,” The vet said. “Take as much time as you want.”

I watched Dave as he caressed Sylvester’s body. He ran his hands over his nose, his ears, his paws. He examined Sylvester’s left back leg where the needle was placed and where there was now a bandage—I didn’t even notice the vet placing the bandage. Dave looked at the bandage, confused. Then he raised the leg and kissed the wound. Tears I had held back threatened to pour out. I stepped outside into the waning afternoon to grieve in private.

Dave stayed a half hour with Sylvester’s body. He would later cremate Sylvester and keep his ashes in an urn by his bed. When I went back in to check on Dave, the vet walked up to me privately and said, “I’ve had to put many animals down in front of their owners, but I never saw anyone cry as hard as your uncle.”

Charger and the other cows continue to call back and forth, getting louder with excitement. From behind the fence against my back, I hear a different noise—the rustle and slow shuffling gait of arthritic legs. I feel a hesitant head nudge me through the wooden rails, the steer’s horns are gentle against my arm. I get up, turn, and look into Murray’s soft, brown eyes. They’re not so different from Sylvester’s.