Most of you won’t read this blog post. I get it. Two years ago, I wouldn’t have read it either. Two years ago, pork bacon was my favorite food, perhaps second to a bloody ribeye steak. And I couldn’t enjoy those favorite foods if I didn’t maintain a mental disconnect between the food and the animal it was carved from.

After a weekend of binge watching three different documentaries about the food industry, I lost my desire to eat meat. You can read about my reasons for becoming vegetarian here, because this blog post isn’t about why I stopped eating animal products in the first place. This blog post is about the joy and love I experience by living a vegan lifestyle.

Even though I have been vegan for almost a year, before this week, I had never made a face-to-face connection with the victims of animal agriculture industry. I forged that connection at Catskill Animal Sanctuary, a non-profit organization devoted to rescuing farm animals. They have about 300 residents, many of whom narrowly escaped slaughter.

You know that feeling you get when you see a video about a dog or a cat who went through an awful trauma and then was rescued by a loving family? That’s the feeling I had meeting the animals at CAS. To learn their stories and to know that they had finally found happiness brought overwhelming joy to my heart.

This is Tucker. His mother was a dairy cow, so he was likely taken away from her on his first or second day of life. Dairy cows cannot produce milk without giving birth, so they are kept perpetually pregnant and always have their calves taken away from them.

Tucker was lucky. Most male calves born to dairy cows are slaughtered and butchered into veal cutlets. Tucker, however, was purchased by a petting zoo. But he wasn’t out of the woods yet. When he grew too big for the petting zoo, he was scheduled to be sold at an auction, where he likely would have been purchased by a butcher. Luckily, a woman who frequently visited the petting zoo with her daughter purchased Tucker to save him from the auction. She brought him to Catskill Animal Sanctuary.

Tucker is the biggest animal currently living at CAS. He weighs about 2,500 pounds. From the picture above, you can see that his head is about the size of my torso. But he is probably the gentlest creature I have ever met. He loves to be scratched underneath his chin, and he gave me some slimy cow kisses.

This is Imogen, Harold and Ellery. They are all female turkeys (yes, including Harold). I don’t have any pictures of me petting Ellery, but she loves to be scratched on her belly, and she buries her beak in her chest feathers when she’s happy.

These three were dropped off in the driveway of the sanctuary by a stranger, so no one knows for sure where they came from, but their bodies offer some clues. All three have had the tips of their beaks cut off and their claws removed. This painful practice (done without anesthetic) is performed by factory farmers to prevent the turkeys, who in live such crowded enclosures that they can barely move, from injuring each other.

You will notice that the heads of these three residents look awfully small in comparison to their bodies. They have this build because farmed turkeys are bred to grow to an unnaturally large size, yielding more meat for the farmers to sell. They are also bread to be all white because the skin of white birds is more visually appealing to consumers.

We are led to believe that turkeys and chickens are dumb animals. The expression “bird brain” communicates that clearly. But our CAS tour guides informed us that there are animal researchers who think chickens and turkeys are actually just as smart as dogs; they just rarely get a chance to prove it.

This is Moses and Ginger. You can tell from the picture that these two are great friends. When we walked up to their pen, Ginger was sleeping and Moses was giving her a nudge. At first, it appeared as though he was trying to wake her up, but the next moment, he lay down next to her. He was just letting her know that he wanted to take a nap with her.

Pigs are incredibly intelligent and social animals. They seek out love and affection just like dogs do—just like all animals do.

This is Bartleby. He’s part of the sanctuary’s Underfoot Family, a group of animals who roam the grounds freely during the day. When I first approached Bartleby, he head butted me. But our tour guide told me he only head butts because he wants attention. He loves to be scratched on his cheeks.

No one knows where Bartleby originally came from. He was found abandoned and was taken in by a family, who then gave him to CAS because they didn’t have any other goats who could keep him company. Goats are also highly social animals, and as you can see from this picture, they are extremely friendly towards humans.

Here’s another goat named Hermione, also part of the Underfoot Family. It seemed like she knew we were posing for a photo.

Many of these animals, including Bartleby, are up for adoption, not because the sanctuary doesn’t want them, but because they are always getting new residents, and finding permanent homes for old residents alleviates some of their financial burdens.

If I wasn’t living in a tiny Brooklyn apartment, I’d have brought Bartleby home with me. If I had 10 acres of land, I’d also take Tucker and Blossom, pictured here:

The connections I made with the residents at CAS were just as strong as the connections I have made with dogs and cats. It may have been even stronger, actually, because I knew these animals persisted through horrific traumas and never lost their will to live, nor their ability to love.

Many people in my life assume that being vegan is difficult. But for me, the only difficult part of this journey was the first part: breaking the chains of social conditioning that separated the meat on my plate from the animal it was carved from. Once my mind, heart and body were free of that construct, being vegan was easy.

To become vegan was to bring my lifestyle into true alignment with the values my parents had taught me since I was little: be kind, be compassionate, treat others how you want to be treated. I do not feel like I am making any sacrifices in order to be vegan. Rather, I feel as though I am bringing more joy and peace into my heart. I feel more spiritually connected with the world, and that feeling is far more valuable than the diet I used to maintain.

A vegan lifestyle is not one of constant penance. Rather, it is one of constant love.