Let’s start with the pig. She’s Esther and she lives in Campbellville, Ontario, with her turkey brother Cornelius, her dog brother Phil, her cat sister Delores, and her dads, Steve and Derek. Given to her dads as micro pig, Esther now weighs almost 600 pounds. She lives indoors, is housebroken, and can take herself outside as needed. She has, however, mangled most of Steve and Derek’s major appliances at one time or another. And in various fits of pique, she’s ravaged so many mattresses that her dads now supply her with pink tumbling mats. Esther, of course, has her own Facebook page and a farmed-animal sanctuary created in her honor. To the delight of some friends and the disbelief of others, she has my full attention. . . and heart.
Less as a curiosity and more as a friend and morality tale. Esther doesn’t talk, as such, but her dad Steve, who’s devoted the last decade to her well-being, provides her voice. She is California girl funny, selfish, and phenomenally smart and clever. She doesn’t need her dad to be smart and clever. That’s all her. I try to see what she’s up to every day. In these political, climate, and Covid times, Esther is the antidote to so much despair.
Esther and her dads are vegans. Without banging the drum of supercilious righteousness, they demonstrate why we all might want to rethink our dependence on industrial farming. Esther is the one (out of 700 million pigs around the world) who gets to wriggle with joy at a tummy rub and can fall asleep cuddled up with her brothers and sisters.
I cannot call myself a vegan or even a consistent vegetarian. I try. But not half as consistently as I could. I weigh my options frequently. For sure, though, Esther much influences my cat parenting and my memories of hosting a garage full of rabbits.
I adopted my first cat in 1973—a teenage Russian blue who came from Roger and Barb’s Pennsylvania farm. Lord, he was a character. There was the day I came home to my historic garret apartment and found that he’d dug the dirt out of every single houseplant I owned. Sooty accompanied me on my inspection tour and then, before my disbelieving eyes, hopped into the bathtub and pooped. I can only wonder what he REALLY wanted to say. He’s the cat that wouldn’t abandon my Washington D. C. bed when Bob was there. He came to Montana with me, sedated in a cat carrier at my feet on the airplane and lived until 1989. Sooty was the first of my cats that Dave tolerated . . .
Cat-rina and Shadow followed—felines that started life in Emily and Amanda’s Columbia Falls home. Shadow had been Fluffy—but acquired his new moniker when he took to settling himself directly behind our heels—the better to trip us. Both cats crossed the Rainbow Bridge the year before Dave died. And with Dave’s grudging but sweet OK, I brought Mr. Noodle home from the Humane Society the following March. A two-year-old, he’d been called Vincent, and Dave thought a name change in order.
Originally barred from our bedroom, Mr. Noodle joined me the night Dave died. And slept beside me most of the rest of his life. On Dave’s side of the bed. He moved with me from our family home to this snug condo. After Mr. Noodle died, I wasted little time in adopting Simon. A ten-year-old, he’d been relinquished by a family increasingly allergic to cats.
Simon’s a lean part-Siamese, though his conversation is ordinary cat, always with great eye contact. He is shy and scared, achingly so. The moment the front door opens he runs for cover. He is not nearly as happy as I am that four young grandchildren now visit frequently. Zoom calls, the vacuum, and the disposal terrorize him. He’s affectionate in his own way, rarely sleeping on my lap, but walking to and fro across it if I’m reading. He doesn’t spend the night with me, but usually settles close for a few minutes and stares at me. He loves tunneling between quilt layers and will do anything to get me to rub his tummy and back. In the morning, he keeps vigil to see if I might be waking up. And then won’t go away unless I pull the covers completely over my head. I am sure that he knows I’m still there, but he and I both pretend I’m not. He’s the first cat in my life who uses his paw as hand—reaching for what he wants or pushing me away.
I almost said “he’s the first cat I owned.” But with Esther’s help, I’ve come to rethink my verbs. Caring for. Living with. Sharing the house with. . . all seem more appropriate descriptors.
And about the rabbits. I would find it so easy to say that we “raised” rabbits—starting with two 4-H mini-lops. And, for the next 20 years, housing somewhere between half-a-dozen and 28, depending on the presence of new babies. Mostly harlequins as part of Amanda and Dave’s intense period of rabbit shows and competitions. But once again, I’m no longer sure that “raised” has the right connotation.
We eschewed the 4-H rabbit manual’s section on how to kill and prepare rabbit stew. We were having none of that. Showing rabbits at the 4-H fair involved Emily and Amanda, dressed in a white shirts and black ties, standing behind a rabbit they had trained to sit still. And in scorching July days, keeping frozen water bottles in their cages.
Dave and Amanda soon realized that civilian rabbit shows were a possibility—and put together the fact that few people in our neck of the country owned harlequins. Having a rare breed upped the odds considerably for winning at shows. Dave devised a rack to hold rabbit cages in the back of our 1986 4-Runner. We covered a good deal of the West accompanied by the smell of warm bunny pee. Amanda was always on the lookout for new “blood.” And Dave was about as excited for the birth of Solo, a beautiful baby harlequin, as he was for his daughters’ arrivals. He kept sneaking home at lunch to check the nest box.
When Dave died, I was still caring for one remaining bunny. And didn’t even consider moving as long as she lived. My role in the bunny operation was, in fact, largely care and feeding. Raising a bit of parsley, washing carrots, scraping pee-soaked papers off the metal bottoms of the rabbit cages and adding new papers. That last part was usually an end-of-day task—hurrying between the house and the garage under star-studded skies. On Saturdays, checking in with the local news agent to pick up carloads of outdated newspapers. Scrubbing cages on sunny October days—with wire brushes and paint scrapers—so that the cages would weather the winter in somewhat clean fashion.
I found it much harder than Amanda and Dave to hold the bunnies—what with their very strong back legs. So I mostly knew the bunnies as garage companions as I fed and watered them and tidied up their cages. Dave left a radio playing for companionship. We provided a heater to keep the temperature reasonable and the water bottles thawed. I would rub noses with the bunnies when they hopped over to the edge of their cages, pet them with the cage door open. And there at midnight, cry if I needed to, talk out the day’s slights or pain. The bunnies’ offered quiet eyes, utter acceptance, solace.
The rabbits who live in the Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary enjoy their own Bunny Town, an outdoor space built with deeply buried, native rock walls and netting over top. A place where they can explore, sniff, hop about, sleep in a patch of sun safely in the day, be with each other. At night or in bad weather, they are escorted into small adjoining houses with straw flooring. Sometimes they share space with rescue chickens.
Our bunny-raising practices mimicked those of the 4-H rabbit leader. We read books. We bent over backwards to address everyday bunny ills. Casually considered bringing the bunnies indoors but were deterred by cats who might be aggressive and electric cords that would be fatal if chewed. Even then, progressive books told us that bunnies could be litter trained. But . . . .
In hindsight and with some flickers of understanding then, I could never be sure that we were good rabbit caretakers. A garage full of cages. Wire mesh always underfoot. Maybe music from KBLL that the bunnies detested. Long long hours when no one appeared. No opportunity to cuddle with a brother or sister. And only the rarest occasions to be outdoors on grass. Though when they were, their leaps and corkscrew whirls showed us nothing but joy!
Scientists of all stripes now explore the intellectual and emotional intelligence of animals. After millennia of asking no such questions, we’ve now started wondering just what our animal companions and those who appear on our plates might know and feel. So much of our culture depends on never asking. Esther, in all her enormous pink glory, has, for me, become the summons to drop the cover stories that humans have told since time immemorial: that animals experience little pain; that they are dumb; that, in the hierarchy of creation, they are less important; that we are “owed” their service, their companionship, their entertainment, their flesh. Drip by drip, the news brings us information to the contrary—one study, one creature at a time. Anthropomorphism may, turns out, be less a vice or a dodge and more a reality.
For me, that means that when Simon calls for attention, I will take the time to give him some. To shift the pattern from those days when we traveled so much, worked so much, played so much that Sooty and Cat-rina and Shadow were nice appendages to our lives, but rarely a priority. When the garage full of rabbits existed not because we sought their companionship and enjoyed caring for them, but for their conformation. We genuinely loved all our pets, but our interactions with them occurred—as we had time and energy more than when they needed it.
Simon remains inscrutable. But I try now to talk with him often. And when he dashes down the corridor and stretches out on his side, why wouldn’t I scratch his belly. Retirement gives me the time. Esther gives me the inspiration to be at his beck and call rather than the reverse. ©
