When Laurie Zaleski was young, her mother sacrificed their glamorous lifestyle to save herself and her children from her husband. It was the 1970s, divorce was messy, and Laurie's mother had never had a job. Poverty became a fact of Laurie's life, but when her mother got a job at the local animal shelter, rescue animals did too. The family of four shared a one-bedroom home with dogs, pigs, goats— even a cow and a horse—all the while learning to care for them on the fly. Laurie shares the often-heartrending story of growing up on what her mother would dub their "funny farm," interspersed with uplifting "Animal Tails": stories from what is now her own funny farm. Complete with the undisputed complexities of life, Laurie's memoir is chock-full of the generosity, protectiveness, and frequent heartache that comes with rescuing and raising animals that have nowhere else to go.