The lives of cats and chickens

On dimensions of pet-parent love.

Our cat mo has been peeing on our stuff. It’s gross and frustrating. Every week, she finds a new target within the house.

I like to go to a gym class on Saturdays at 9am, but this Saturday morning I was in the backyard spraying enzyme spray on the contents of Andy’s shirt drawer at 830 and didn’t know if I would make it.

She didn’t used to be like this. In fact, I don’t think she ever once defaced our Koreatown studio in LA. She peed a few times in our next apartment in Los Feliz, but it was clearly territorial — Catniss the neighborhood boss-lady was marking our doormat, and mo was defending her turf. Still frustrating, but more understandable.

Now we live in a rural spot with a handful of free-roaming cats that pass through the yard, and it’s flipping her out. “Don’t touch our stuff” still seems to be the throughline, stuff which recently includes our shirts, a chair, two of my purses (!) left overnight on the floor of my office, and my keyboard sustain pedal. She’ll spray, and we’ll find it 12 to 36 hours later and we’ll treat it with enzyme, vinegar, and a triple machine washing if possible. We talk to her about it, we point and stomp, we sigh deeply, we clean things and move on.

Luckily the smell seems to come out entirely in the wash. But I’ve realized the situation touches on some deep shame about being a gross person, and fear that our home will start smelling like cat pee to visitors. Which of course I could therapize to mean being rejected by my peers, kicked out of the village and left to starve in a cave in the woods. The core of most shame cycles, right?

Andy gets frustrated too, and grossed out, but he’s better about tapping into compassion. She is an animal, after all. She doesn’t understand our rules or why they matter. She probably thinks the more our house smells like her, the more safe we’ll be from predators and stealers of stuff. Cats are especially bad at discipline because apparently their attention shifts so quickly that scolding them mere seconds later doesn’t connect in their cat-brains as punishment to the thing that preceded the scolding. They’ve already moved on. It’s hard to learn lessons when you’re that present, I suppose.

It’s a particular relationship to get frustrated, angry even, while still loving someone or something so deeply and consistently that there is no doubt of forgiveness. I don’t have kids, but I imagine it must be similar: you are *so mad* at them for what they did, you don’t understand and will never fully understand why they did it, and yet somehow the love remains like a cool undercurrent below the surging hot surface.

And since everything is relationship, and relationship is a two-way street, I have to own my part in it. We’re doing this to each other, in a way. She is an animal yet I keep her captive, my pampered prisoner. She’s also a certifiable housecat with minimal street smarts, and long ago decided to keep her indoors and out of reach from coyotes and hawks. Should I be completely surprised that she occasionally pees on our wood floor, not that different than the backyard where we let her pee freely to us by peeing on our floor?

I’ve read that cats adapt to living with humans by deciding they’re part of the same tribe, which is why some cats take night duty, watching intently out the windows while their humans sleep. In this scenario, if she senses danger or excitement, our tiny sentry defends our stuff. By peeing on it, making it smell like her, like us, so no one will take it.

We bought refills of the cat-calming diffusers and more powder supplements, and treated the areas with essential oils said to deter spraying. I hope it works this time.

Saturday morning we were also on chicken duty, watching our Lavender Maran closely. For what seemed like an entire 24 hours she had been standing very still on the floor of the hen house with a listless look in her eye. She wasn’t coming down to eat or drink water, and didn’t seem to be laying.

Chickens can slow down for many reasons: becoming “broody” or wanting to sit on their non-fertilized eggs, or parasites or stress. But we were paying close attention because just a few days earlier, out of the blue, her sister died. The other Lavender Maran was still lived at my mom’s house, and she was a real specimen. Early on we named her Cloud because she floated around the coop, her pristine white-grey coat fluffed up around her like a cumulus, unbothered by her cohort and their silly attempts at a pecking-order.

But in a matter of days, she had started to seem weak and appear scraggly. And on Tuesday, my mom found her in the run, keeled over next to the water dispenser. We buried her that afternoon.

So not surprisingly, when Patricia began acting strange in different ways, we kept close watch. We asked chatgpt what might be going on, and a detailed response suggested egg binding: an egg might be stuck in her abdomen, which would lead to exactly the symptoms we were seeing. We filled a tub with warm water and Andy held her half-underwater while gently massaging her belly to encourage any stuck egg. He didn’t feel anything, but she seemed to relax. We pulled her out after 20mins and she pooped, which was a good sign of no blockage. We put her in a box with a hea ting pad, food and water, so she could rest.

I called two vets, then a friend who works on a chicken ranch. Answers were unsatisfying: it could be many things, impossible to diagnose from afar. And probably not a big deal. But also, chickens can go downhill fast. Neither local vet worked on chickens, the closest was an avian specialist an hour away.

And here, the inevitable question presents itself: what is a chicken life worth? We love our chickens: they are pets, they give us eggs, they have personalities. We take our cat to the vet, is a chicken any different? Farmers might say yes; chickens are more functional and disposable. But I had to decide what I believed in that moment. And, if I decided to drive the chicken an hour away and spend hundreds of dollars, I still might not get any answers. In the meantime, we’d wait a few more hours to see if the bath helped. I checked on her 20 minutes later, and then again 20 minutes after that. The third time I uncovered the box, Patricia had died.

We still have no idea what turned. It’s uncanny, spooky that she died just days after her sister, who lived miles away. Maybe it was something with the breed, some vulnerability or immune dysfunction? Even writing this to you feels vulnerable, like I’ll be judged as a bad pet-parent. But it’s now five days later and the other two chickens (Oogie and Dancer) seem fine, unaffected. I told chatgpt what happened, and it snapped into therapist-mode. I’m so, so sorry, it said. Do you want to talk about it? What happens when chatgpt becomes intertwined with a death? I wondered but didn’t type. I’m sure there’s a disclaimer in the terms & conditions.

Cloud & Patricia, March 2025

Despite mo the cat’s bad behavior, we cuddled her extra hard that night, spooning our cheeks against her belly as she purred loudly. We buried Patricia on Easter morning down by the vegetable beds.

Any lifeless body is confronting, and forces me to think about my own mortality. The body becomes a shell, the spirit is gone. It’s hard to believe that it’s irreversible, and that being is never again coming back alive. It’s scary to think about that happening to people that I love, to people that I’m close with. But I also deeply believe that the more comfortable we are with death, the more we can understand this life and make the most of it.

And now I’m in the backyard, watching two chickens roam and peck instead of three. Mo is harassing a lizard that she caught at the edge of the patio. She’s batting it with her paws then snatching it up in her mouth over and over, to dangle it above the ground before dropping it somewhere new. Then she chases it until she gets distracted or loses sight. Again, the value of life becomes unclear. My buddhist-loving heart wants to intervene, to save the poor lizard, but she’s an animal. We keep her indoors most of the day, her predator-instincts suppressed by napping on folded blankets.

There’s no perfect answer. But what I decide to do is allow her to chase a lizard for a few minutes, let nature do its thing, and watch her be happy and free.

Backing/music track: “plucked,” an unfinished song from 2020