Missing Niala

September, 2023

How the chickens saved my life (part 2). You can read part one here.

I have three chickens. I don’t have favourites, but each of my girls holds a very special place in my heart. If I was a chicken, I would be Niala. Noisy Niala. Exuberant, childish, enthusiastic. Niala is the little chubby girl in the playground who’s a bit too boisterous and gets told off for being a bully. But really, she’s just excited. Underneath her bluster she’s a sweet gentle girl desperately trying to be loved. In fact, it’s not even trying to be loved, but trying to love, because she’s all about giving. She’s the life and soul of the party in the right crowd. With the wrong people she’s seen as brash, noisy, mis-understood. Niala pushes to the front of everything, full of life, bursting with energy. Niala responds to everything with loud animated enthusiasm bordering on frantic. Especially food.

Niala has a tumour. At least we think it’s  tumour, she has a bacterial infection of her sinuses which has not responded to antibiotics. The first round of antibiotics was in their water, painless enough. It didn’t make any difference. The second round was against my better judgement but it was tablets and she was good as gold, devouring the tablets in whatever I offered her. Blindly, unquestioningly consuming with relish whatever tidbit I put in front of her. How unlike the cat I thought grimly. Sally used to be like that then suddenly something switched and now she eyes me with suspicion and turns her nose up at anything I offer that has a tablet in it. How does she know I wonder? How does she know. As an animal communicator I know how she knows: animals are reading us all the time, she’s reading the shift in my energy because I worry she won’t take it, and she knows something is off. But as a pet owner I forget all that and assume my cat is just difficult. If Niala did know, she didn’t care. Perky bright eyes looking at my fingers, eager for more. No suspicion about why I brought her into the house, just naively eager for more.

At first there were 5. Ella, Niala, Wambui, Pink and Dora. Red, orange, green, pink and purple were the tags I put on their legs before we could tell them apart. Except Niala, she had a speckled neck, she was easily identified. Pink was supposed to be Aisha or Alysha, but I could never remember which so she stayed Pink. Ella was Red for a long, long time. Dora the Explorer was the first chicken to get ill. She silently and suddenly shut down, like a robot with the power switched off. She would muster up a peep, peep when you approached her and half open her eyes, and then almost immediately shut them again, and her head would sink back into her fluffed up form, tail firmly tucked between her legs. A little fluffed up penguin. The vets poked around but didn’t come up with much. I noticed her crop was full in the mornings, now I realise that was a sign that she was shutting down, but the vets took her in and flushed it out. I learned two things after Dora passed. One was that you need an avian vet. My vets were lovely but they didn’t know any more about chickens than I did and they shouldn’t have listened to my Google inspired theories. I am horrified now that we put her though this procedure, I should have just let her be. The other is that when the end is nigh I need to trust myself with what is appropriate. I came home to find Gary had her in a box near the Aga, anxiously trying to make her comfortable with some warmth. That little act of kindness in Gary broke my heart: Gary is appalled at the thought of chickens in the house. In the end we had her euthanised. So desperate was I to do everything I could but after Dora I realised that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

I don’t remember much about Wambui, it all happened so quickly. I didn’t do any procedures on her. The familiar “sick chicken” sight that the online chicken forums are full of. I had just learned muscle testing and when she said it was time to go, I just took her to the vet to be put down. It was so ironic, I had been healing Niala and Pink non-stop, daily, for weeks as Niala had been bullying Pink and just as all that settled down, Wambers just drifted off. I feel so guilty that I hadn’t been spending time on her, one minute everything was getting better between them all, the next Wambers was fading away.

I found an avian vet after we moved: I had read somewhere that it was pointless seeing a normal vet and my experience had re-enforced that. My previous vet had given me horse-sized tablets to be dissolved in water and squirted down Ella’s throat in 3 syringes, twice a day. To this day Ella doesn’t like anyone coming close to her. When Pink got sick I took her to the avian vet expecting to come home without her, but instead he gave me manageable antibiotics and within days she was back to normal. But I have a very strong sense about what I would and would not put a chicken through to “save” it’s life.

The third visit to the avian vet with Niala she managed to convince me to give her more liquid antibiotics. This meant waking her up in the evening. Chickens go to bed at dusk, no exceptions so the short winter days meant that we had to open up the coop in the dark and drag her into the light, shove antibiotics down her throat (always a worry you’ll squirt it down the wrong hole and drown them – they have no gag reflex) and then put her back to bed. But actually it was fine – but I don’t know why I let myself get talked into it. Like doctors, vets seem to be focussed on what’s possible rather than the bigger picture of what for the best for the animal. I had decided enough was enough, but whilst I can blame the vet I suspect it was my deep seated belief that if I wasn’t actively doing something to save her life then it was my fault she was dying. Niala had told me repeatedly that it wouldn’t work, and I sensed she has a tumour in her neck. The next procedure suggested by the vet was opening up the wound and flushing it out twice a day – by this point I had found the courage to say enough was enough.

That was several weeks ago but the swelling on her face has grown. Every day I ask if she’s in pain. Every week I get my friend to check in with her as well. Every day she tells me it’s fine. It’s a bit uncomfortable, but she’s happy to be alive and yes, she will let me know what it’s time go, but meantime, she likes the breeze (not wind mind you, she hates the wind) in her feathers, the sun on her face, the smell of the damp grass, the musty earth under her feet. She still sunbathes on the grass and digs a hole under the hedge. At least she would if it hadn’t been raining for a week.

This week has been hard because I can’t see her interacting because the weather is so dire they hide in the shed all day. When I see her she is actively interacting with me, but I don’t know what happens when I leave the shed. Does she sink into the fluffy sick chicken pose? I constantly doubt myself. Last week however, I realised, with some gentle persuasion from Niala, that maybe, just maybe, the reason I don’t want to do “things’ for my animal is because I am more closely connected to them than I realise and that I know, intuitively that they don’t want me to “do things” to them. As soon as the vet offers procedures or repeated drugs, I feel a whole weary, “oh no not that”. I immediately think that it’s me being selfish. Because I can’t bear their distress. The former because my Mum drummed it in to me, how selfish I was, the latter because I have learned that my sensitivity is all about making myself more comfortable: if I can soothe your pain I don’t have to witness it. That makes me selfish too. Maybe Mum was right.

I notice Niala pecking repeatedly in the grass, and on closer observation I realise that she is missing the seed. The swelling on her nose is fouling her sight and she obviously can’t see depth. I try giving her a pile of seed and she has a little more success, but in a few days I see that she’s not pecking at all. My heart breaks a little bit more as her world gets a little bit smaller. Pecking mindlessly at things is a big part of her day. I do find her pecking at the orange flash of a bag of compost and that makes me feel better.

I find a V shaped vase I made on a pottery course, with a softly curved narrow base. I start soaking Niala’s seeds to make them bigger and putting them in the vase, propped up in a saucepan with newspaper so she can’t knock it over. Come “snack” time, I carry the little saucepan outside and she’s learned to recognise this contraption as hers. The vase funnels her peck to the bottom and she happily eats like this for a few more weeks. She’s still able to eat the pellets – I tried mash for a while but they all emphatically ignored it and I had to throw it away.

Eckhart Tolle says when a cat can no longer jump up on something high, he doesn’t pine about it. He doesn’t spiral into a depression about getting older or berate himself for not being as limber or fit as he used to be. He simply finds another way. Or sleeps somewhere else. Despite my aching heart, Niala isn’t mooching around the garden feeling deprived and unhappy. She keeps reminding me of this but it’s so hard. I’m constantly looking for evidence that she still has quality of life. Her head is misshapen and I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter. All that matters is how she feels. She’s a lot quieter now, and I’m already regretting the final dose of antibiotics because she’s not keen to be near me now. The blind childlike trust has gone and she’s wary of being poked and prodded. This is something I will get right eventually, each dead chicken makes me realise that I don’t need to do all these things to “save” them, I need to trust my own instincts, do what I can without imposing too much, and then let them be. My relationship with them, their trust of me, is far more important than “saving” them for a few more days, maybe weeks. I am not required or obliged to save them at any cost, I know that. Yes of course I do my best but I can choose NOT to do something that will make her last days awkward with me.

In the community I’m a part of we are all sensitive animal lovers and there are some folk who literally give up their lives for their pets. Nursing them through illnesses that require 24/7 care. I wonder if I’m a fraud because I don’t do enough. Niala helps me understand we’re all on a unique journey. My need to save my animals comes from my need to to save. To feel worthy. To feel good enough. To be doing something. If you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem. It isn’t representative of my love for her. My sacrifice is not proportional to my love for her. For some people staying home to care for an animal may be the animal’s way of giving their person a purpose, or making them reassess their lives, priorities and their relationships. There are so many factors at play, and our animals are controlling all of it. But my animals are teaching me to do less, not more, for them, because I need to relinquish the responsibility for all the pain in the whole world that I carry on my shoulders.

When the time comes l notice her huddled and fluffed up and unresponsive and I know. I ask Niala if it’s time and this day I hear yes. No hesitation. I went to find Gary but before I even ask his opinion he says “I think it’s time”. The tears fall as I write this. I miss my little girl so much more than Dora and Wambers, because I’ve had so much more time with her. I’ve had Niala over 6 years. She’s been beside me on this journey of healing, then animal communication. She’s even been the subject of other students’ learning, everyone wants to read a chicken. And they all got her huge energy, her loud boisterous personality, her dancing shoes… Her sweet, sweet gentleness under all the brashness. Because when I stared into her beady eye at the first visit to the vet a few months earlier I knew nothing I did would change the course of this tumour and she was telling me it would be OK. I don’t often have that clarity with my own animals, but for a few moments she held my eyes steady as a rock and it felt like time stopped.

Life is quieter without Niala. Pink and Ella form a surprising team, top and bottom of the pecking order: I never envisaged they would be the two left. I just assumed Niala would live forever. They groom each other awkwardly but it’s good to see them relying on each other. Ella will still pull rank every now and then but it doesn’t come up much. When Pink wanders off, it is Ella who squawks and flaps her wings to catch up. But I miss Niala. I could always get them to do things because Niala was so eager and compliant, she waddle along happily to me, and they would follow. Now they just look at me, suspiciously. Our relationships have all changed again. I worry about what’s next, what will I do when there is only one, but Ella and Pink remind me they are still here, thank you very much. I’ve been picking Ella up to steam her nostril as it was blocked, and we’ve actually bonded in a different way. Pink will still scream like a stuck pig if I pick her up, but they’ve both enjoyed a bit of grooming, and I intend to do more of that. We’re all bonding in a new way.

All my girls are so different, and with each change, our relationship shifts. If anyone had told me the depth of relationship you can have with a chicken I probably wouldn’t have understood. I know now you can have a relationship with any animal. The chickens have taught me so much I can’t begin to describe it. They have brought so much joy into my life that I am eternally grateful to them. When I first left work, Gary said “I worry you don’t want to work because you’d rather be at  home with the cat and the chickens”. I was appalled. And ashamed. Because it was true. I could never have admitted that back then. But now 5 years later I’m not ashamed anymore. I can say, YES, I want to stay at home with my cat and my chickens, what’s wrong with that!

It’s not over yet, but Niala has left a big hole. But as write this I can feel Ella nipping at me a bit, reminding me that they are both still here and not to be overlooked. Plenty more to come, she says