They Don’t Just Die — The Story of Pussy Willow | by Pam Ahern | Oct, 2025

Behind every lamb chop lies a story of suffering we choose not to see — until one little life named Pussy Willow reminds us what’s at stake.

For how many days Pussy Willow had suffered before she found sanctuary, we shall never know. But the legacy of that suffering, we live with still.

Late on a Friday afternoon in September, a small black-faced Dorper lamb was carried into our tiny vet room. Though kindness had saved her, we feared it might not be enough to keep her alive.

Only time would tell.

Dried scours clung to her tail as crusted mucus blocked her nose and it was as if a freight train roared in her chest. Yet through her exhaustion and pitiful state, her eyes met ours with a plea that every rescuer knows — mercy.

In the days that followed, we got our answer.

We held Pussy Willow close and whispered words she should have heard at birth. Words that told her how precious and loved she was. So removed from her mumma she had lost the ability to suckle but not the need for the nourishment it would bring. That she wriggled against us as we gently tube-fed her, was her declaration she wanted to live.

But kindness, while powerful, is not always enough to undo what cruelty and neglect have delivered. And so, sweet Pussy Willow closed her eyes that one final time and slipped away.

Yet lambs like her do not simply die. And theirs is a story that must be told.

Those tiny, still bodies that dot frosty paddocks and carve niches in barren landscapes each year, those born on slaughterhouse-bound trucks, those who slip away in sanctuaries despite every effort, they do not just die.

They suffer. For hours. For days. For weeks.

And their suffering is almost always as silent as it is unseen.

But lambs are not commodities, though our society treats them as such. They are thinking, feeling, social beings. Anyone who has shared their life with a dog or a cat knows how deeply animals can love and feel fear, comfort, joy and pain.

Spend time with a lamb and you’ll see the same spark of curiosity, affection and playfulness. Yet for most people, a lamb’s only presence in their life is a small piece of theirs on a plate.

It has become easy and convenient not to see suffering when it’s seasoned and served this way. But that is not innocence, it is complicity.

The question each of us must ask is this: is the fleeting pleasure of eating an innocent being ever worth their suffering, however unseen that suffering may be?

Before we shrug, laugh or deflect, perhaps we should pause and look into the mirror. For staring back is an animal too. One capable of reason, empathy and choice.

Because in the end, it is not only the lambs’ lives at stake, but our own humanity too.