My Chicken Became a Cat—And Taught Me to Imagine a Happier, Healthier World

If there is one key to making it in a family farm—or in any business that thwarts the trend toward relentless greed and destruction of the planet—it is the ability to believe.

by Shannon Hayes

Tayla and Strawberry. Photo by the author.

On Thursday, Mom and Dad sit down on the back porch to listen to the chorus of afternoon crickets. Mom’s cat, Tayla, hops into her lap. Dad’s cat, Strawberry, hops into his. Tayla has long, calico fur. Strawberry has feathers.

Many creatures pass in and out of our lives, and a few always prove noteworthy in some way. 

When Strawberry first came to us, we mistook her for a chicken. Most people do. Her beak, comb, and scaly feet could fool anyone. But Strawberry knew her true identity and patiently corrected us over her years at Sap Bush Hollow. Eventually, we came to understand that she had no place in the chicken coop and no place out in the fenced-in pasture with the other birds.

Strawberry roams the farm freely, but like any cat prefers to keep to the back porch. Like a chicken, she ovulates almost daily, leaving eggs in unlikely places—in Dad’s feed buckets, in the kindling box, beneath the brake pedal of the truck. She never acknowledges these eggs. They are forgotten symptoms of a former identity. Like a true cat, she denies any part of her reality with which she does not agree. Mom has learned to look out for them, to gather them up without chastising Strawberry; just as she patiently cleans up the droppings Strawberry periodically leaves by the back door (she has not learned to use a litter box).

Photo of Strawberry by Shannon Hayes.

She is, however, our best mouser.

Strawberry is not the only creature on our farm who created a new reality for herself. Confit looked like a mallard duck, but she mated with Foie Gras, a goose. Like geese, they were a pair for life, and Foie Gras never questioned her identity—at least not as far as we know. She laid eggs every spring, and he guarded her while she sat on them, waiting for them to hatch. They never did, but neither Confit nor Foie Gras allowed that to come between them.

Isabelle was born to one of our breeding ewes one May, but recognized her true identity as a dog after the death of her mother. She does not run away when we try to herd her. She follows us, just like the border collies, through gates and across fields. She has never been much of a breeding ewe, but, like a good dog, she helps us move the flock.

And let’s not get started on the dogs, who believe they are people….

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