Having a pet can be a great companion in loneliness. Pets not only help reduce feelings of isolation but also ease mental stress. Professor Sonia Kong, a psychologist from Canada, focuses her work on exactly this—how the bond with pets can support a healthy and balanced life. She teaches her students about this connection in her classroom.

Professor Kong herself owns a pet that helps her manage stress—but it’s not your typical companion. She keeps a chicken.

Sonia explains that her chicken helps her cope with daily emotions. Speaking to CBC News, she said, “I think it’s very intelligent. It seems to understand my feelings.”

Her pet chicken, named “Saturday,” is 11 months old and was purchased from a farm near Prince George, British Columbia. Sonia adds, “When I’m feeling low, it sits beside me and looks at me. I think it’s trying to understand what’s going on in my mind. Maybe it’s trying to say, ‘Why are you upset?’—and that means a lot to me.”

When moving around the city, Sonia brings Saturday along, for which she has designed a special type of diaper.

Currently, as a professor at Northern British Columbia University, Sonia Kong is conducting an international study—alongside Assistant Professor Tracy Wong from the Chinese University of Hong Kong—on how pets affect the social and mental development of teenagers.

Sonia’s parents are still adjusting to their daughter’s unusual choice of pet. Sometimes they jokingly ask if she plans to eat her chicken. Sonia laughs about it and says, “I tell them, I would never do that. It’s my pet. They joke with me, and that’s just a cultural difference.”