I was six the first time I hurt something I loved. Growing up on a farm, my sister Valarie and I played with Barbies. But our best friends were chicks and calves, puppies and kittens. Each had a name. “Don’t treat the animals like toys,” Mom called to us while hanging wet laundry on a fraying white clothesline. “We won’t, Mommy,” I answered, my arms full of six-week-old kittens. A spring breeze carried the musky scent of cow droppings and freshly mown grass. Dresses, hung by their hems, flapped in the wind as though trying to fly away. Chickens pecked at the ground near my mother, contentedly clucking as they…