Vernon Easterhare Declares:

To stroke the fur of my kitty and know that I help keep her alive feels like prayer to Jesus in my wee hovel, which is by choice and design the least pretentious I can make of inner-city apartment living in Louisville. But see, me and Kitty Tifla every day have devoted loving: by mutual choosing and signals reciprocally-begun, my little baby jumps atop my typing table for petting and petting and petting.

This loving will go on only so long as Tifla wants loving; she is not usually satisfied unless she gets stroked two hours or more. All the while – I hope this does not seem morbid – in spirit it is done in lightness and joy – I tell my little girl pet that someday-she-will-die-and-someday-Vernon-will-die and she will be able to visit Vernon in people-heaven and Vernon will be able to visit her in pet-heaven and she will have fun with all the saint pets in all heavens forever!

Let us posit that here I was prophetic, that the Burden and Word of Lady Jahweh presses my utterance; I am not sure how much I understand what I just said above, let alone Kitty Tifla. But I do know that she knows that the utmost of priority of priorities is to love as much as possible in this life!

This amounts to a version of Pascal's Bet, but for the critters: If there ain't no pet heaven, then Kitty Tifla just had some nice words uttered to her as she was petted, then she dies; but if a really really nice God has pet heaven, so much the more felicitous – both for the pets and for their doting owners.

Jesus wanted me to say this. He put me up to it in holy mischief. Don't argue with me, argue with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit! There is a pet heaven, or so my Burden unburdens me to say, in a pure and merry spirit. For I cannot see otherwise than that God will judge humankind on its treatment of animals (and the natural world), a subject worthy but not invoked by the Law or Prophets directly. Somebody has to prophesy for the innocent little pets, so it might as well be Vernon, singing, singing, singing.

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by Vernon Easterhare or, as some of us like to call him, Saint Vernon, patron saint of the pets