Flighty Friendship

One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

BROOKLYN’S FOUR BARN CATS had no idea they weren’t chickens. And really, she couldn’t blame them. Brooklyn had discovered the newborn feral kittens the same week she received a fresh brood of baby chicks. The two groups had grown up together. In fact, for the first several months of their lives, the kittens and chicks had played together, slept together, and eaten their meals together. Finn, Skye, Panda, and Archie considered the chickens their siblings.

The kittens had also befriended the horses and dogs at the farm, but their favorite playmates were the chickens, whose size, proximity, and lack of teeth made them ideal companions.

But as the chickens grew—or more specifically, as one particular chicken began to grow a rather pronounced red comb on his head and began practicing an eye-opening cock-a-doodle-doo—the dynamics between the furred and feathered siblings began to change.

Jeremy the rooster came as quite a surprise to Brooklyn, who thought she was raising a brood of all hens. However, his affectionate personality, protective nature with the hens, and precision as an alarm clock made him a welcome addition to the farm.

That was, to everyone but the cats.

As Jeremy grew more comfortable in his role as protector of the hens, he grew less tolerant of feline shenanigans. And over time the hens did as well. Unfortunately, their aloofness and annoyance only seemed to encourage the cats to try harder to win back their affection. It seemed that at least once a day Brooklyn was breaking up a dispute between the chickens and the cats.

“Finn, stop chasing Frida!”

“Jeremy, we do not peck our friends—even if they’re being annoying!”

“Skye, you are not a chicken! Get out of the coop!”

“This is not what I signed up for when I decided to live on a farm,” Brooklyn would often mumble to herself while working through her chores.

One day while she was in the horse pasture scooping manure, Jeremy—flanked by Florence, Frida, and Zazu—chased Finn, Skye, Archie, and Panda into the pasture. The four felines looked up at Brooklyn as if expecting her to discipline their feathered pursuers.

“I’m staying out of this,” Brooklyn said with a laugh, dumping the contents of her shovel into the wheelbarrow.

Jeremy and his ladies gave a final flap of their wings and rejoined the others, who were pecking in the grass beside the barn. The cats stood in the middle of the pasture, trying to decide their next move.

As they silently debated their options, two of Brooklyn’s mares, Juno and Dakota, sauntered over to investigate the newcomers. Brooklyn smiled wide as the large horses lowered their heads to sniff their feline visitors. Dakota even allowed Panda to rub against her leg.

“Good job, Dakota,” Brooklyn praised, walking over to scratch her back. A minute later, she scooped Panda up and let her investigate Dakota’s head. “It looks like these two are willing to be your friends. Maybe you should start hanging out here more often.”

And they did—when unrelenting rain forced the chickens into their coop for an extended stay. The cats amused themselves by playing in the horses’ muddy field, cuffing stalks of hay, climbing up the fence to see the horses, and darting around their legs as the equines drank from the water trough.

The horses really seem to like the cats’ company, Brooklyn observed on the third day of constant rain.

But when the weather cleared and the chickens were freed from their enclosure, the cats couldn’t help themselves. They ran right into the middle of the foraging chickens and tried to get them to play. Jeremy, clearly not amused, gave a loud warning and then charged. Wide-eyed, Finn, Skye, Panda, and Archie skedaddled to the pasture—straight to the nine-hundred-pound friends who gladly welcomed them.

PAWS & PONDER . . .

In what ways can unreliable friends lead to trouble? What makes someone a reliable or trustworthy friend? Who do you consider to be trustworthy friends in your life? What is something you can do today to be a trustworthy friend to someone else?

Paws & Pray

God, thank you for the gift of friendship and for the good friends you have given me. Help me to always be thoughtful and reliable, someone who puts others first. And above all, help me to seize opportunities to tell others about you—the greatest Friend of all.