I used to tell people I went to the farm to visit my parents. That was true—but it wasn’t the whole truth. I was just as eager to see the animals. The farm, after all, didn’t just smell like animals and feed—it smelled like home. And home wasn’t home without them.
They were more than background noise or chores to tend. They were companions. They were characters. They were family.
We inherited Aunt Mary’s animals first. Her cat, Kitza—whose name simply meant “cat” in Croatian—was an older outdoor tabby with a thick, soft coat that she could no longer groom on her own. She shed everywhere, and you had to brush her often or the fur would mat. She had the sweet temperament of a creature who’d lived a long life and had nothing left to prove, but she kept her edge. She was infamous for dragging home both live and dead rodents and depositing them like trophies on the front porch, as if to say, “I still got it.”
Kitza wasn’t with us long. Just a little over a month. One day she laid on the porch and wouldn’t move. My mom found her and gently lifted her onto the passenger seat of her car. On the way to the vet, Kitza extended her paw, touched my mom’s leg, let out a soft meow, and then she was gone.
After Kitza passed, the porch felt strangely quiet—until Oreo arrived.
Oreo was a tuxedo cat, a shelter rescue my parents brought home not long after Kitza’s death. He strutted across the yard like he thought he was a lion, fearless and territorial. He never backed down—from dogs, cats, ducks, or even geese. His meow sounded like an engine struggling to turn over or someone waking up from a deep sleep. But when he curled up in your lap and fell asleep, all the bravado faded and he became a soft, slow-breathing ball of love.
Smokey had been with us before all of this. I found her when I was still living in an apartment in Elyria—back when pets weren’t allowed. I heard her crying one night in the parking lot, and found her hiding under a car, small and gray and trembling. I took her inside anyway. She felt like mine already.
But I couldn’t keep her. I called my parents, and they got Aunt Mary on the phone. Not long after, I brought Smokey to the farm. Aunt Mary took her in her arms, smiling with a kind of joy I’ll never forget and said, “You’re my little Smokey!”
Smokey was an outdoor cat and she had a tender soul. When she returned home from one of her adventures, she’d leap into the tree in the yard until she was at eye level, then rub her head against yours—gently, deliberately, like she was saying, “I love you.”
Aunt Mary also left behind Sammy, a mutt with the coloring and build of a German Shepherd. He adored people, but we had to keep him on a run because he had a habit of vanishing for days at a time. Every time he came home, we’d give him a bath—no matter how many times we washed him, that dog managed to smell like something that had died weeks earlier. Like poop and pond water had a baby. Still, he craved affection. He’d lean into you, eyes full of need, begging for love despite the stench. You gave it anyway.
Then came Blackjack.
My parents spotted him in the road on their way home, a tiny black kitten hunched in the gravel. He wasn’t moving. My dad stopped the car, got out, and realized the kitten’s hind leg was broken. They took him to the vet, then brought him home. His leg never healed properly, so it always stuck out awkwardly when he sat. We called him Blackjack, and I called him my “parrot cat,” because he’d perch on my shoulder like a parrot and ride around the yard with me. He was broken, but he didn’t seem to mind. Neither did I.
The final addition was a long-awaited promise.
My dad had told my mom he’d get her a collie, and he finally followed through. That’s how Maxwell—Max for short—came to us. Unlike Sammy, Max stuck close to home. He never needed a leash. He just understood where he belonged. Oreo bullied him endlessly—smacking him, pouncing on him, tormenting him with affection disguised as domination. Max never barked back. He just took it, gentle as ever.
What we didn’t expect was that Max had a shepherd’s instinct. We never trained him, but he instinctively herded the ducks and geese, circling around them whenever it was time to put them in for the night. One minute he was lounging on the porch; the next he was darting around the yard like he’d just clocked in.
The chickens didn’t last long. One vanished, most likely to a predator. The other died of old age, quietly, without drama. But the muscovy ducks—about twenty-five of them—stayed with us. They had red faces and made soft, breathy sounds instead of quacks. They followed me like I was one of them, like I belonged in their waddling line.
And then there were the geese.
Four old ladies who ruled the yard with chatter and false bravado. They hissed. They squawked. They marched after you like a gang of angry librarians. But as soon as you brought out food, they fell silent, humbled by cracked corn and breadcrumbs.
These animals became part of my daily rhythm. They taught me how to care for something beyond myself. How to be still. How to be present. They taught me how to be a shepherd. When I lost my parents, it was as if they grieved with me. The farm was quiet in a different way then. But they stayed close. They kept me tethered to life in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time.
Even now, I miss them—every one of them. Smokey in the tree. Oreo’s wheezy meow. Blackjack on my shoulder. Max rounding up the ducks. Sammy stinking up the place. Kitza, with her presents.
I still hear them sometimes, in the back of my memory—the breathy murmur of ducks, the low bark of a collie, the rustle of feathers, the whisper of a cat rubbing against my cheek.