Some Old Words While I Unpack My Bags: A Common Misconception Regarding Paradise

I’d like, if I could, to correct a common misconception regarding Paradise. The animal sanctuaries are actually, in fact, offshore, a couple islands just off the coast which have been set aside for cats, primates, and horses. As with humans, however, not all cats, primates, and horses are admitted to Paradise, although virtue is not the determining criteria for these animals. To enter Paradise –or rather, to be granted eternal refuge on these Paradisiacal adjuncts– a cat, horse, or monkey has to have had the sort of relationship with a human whereby it was perceived by its human companion to have been in possession of a soul. Such relationships constitute what is offically called “Empathic Baptism.”

This is admittedly a rule that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it’s been in place since the last major ammendments and revisions to the admissions criteria were signed into the Book of Law at the end of the 19th century.

Dogs are the only animals given a blanket pass to Paradise proper –good dogs, I should say, but there have been very few remembered examples of dogs having been denied admission. I have to admit that, being a dog person, I find this arrangement more than satisfactory. There are, though, plenty of people –equal rights animal rights activists, mainly– who carp about the issue all the time, but it’s the way things are in Paradise. This is essentially a very conservative place, where proposals for even minor changes are frowned upon and met with stiff resistance from the governing council. There are also, I should say, a lot of people here who have no apparent love for animals of any kind, and this is a constituency that is constantly complaining about the absence of meat from our diets. If we had a democratic system in place here and the matter of admitting animals was put to a vote I have no doubt that the animal lovers among us would be soundly defeated.

Certainly people recognize that if you open the gates to such animals as cattle and chickens and rats and the like you’re going to have a big problem on your hands in a hurry. The mortality rate and life expectancy of most animals makes any sort of concessions or compromises on this point problematic, to say the least. We’re already packed in so tight that social interaction is all but impossible. The streets are always so crowded that I virtually never leave my dormitory any more, and I’m forced to share my bed with the six dogs who spent most of their lives with me. It’s admittedly not the most comfortable of arrangements, but I guess that’s the price you pay for attaching yourself to other living creatures, and I wouldn’t think of making a fuss.

I had a neighbor for a time –a woman from Portland– who bitched so loudly and for so long over the refusal to grant an exception for her ferret that she was eventually shipped back to Purgatory until she learned to keep her yap shut. I can’t say I was sorry to see her go.