Oh One Without a Second, I come before you as a lawyer—not by trade and training, but by my nature—asking Compensation and Reparations for the Animals.

With the discarnate Cat Fatty Lumpkin (F. Atty. Lumpkin, Esq.) and A Certain Horse, I come not as Your slave and lover, which I am, but as the daughter, sister, niece, and aunt of lawyers, a natural attorney with no degree.

Of Your Power, we demand relief and compensation, with full consideration of pain and suffering, for the farm animals, the laboratory animals, the victims of habitat loss, of abandonment, of things too painful to describe even here, in this most serious Complaint.

Before Your Love, Oh Compassionate and Merciful, we bring the case of these Little Ones. Knowing that Your physical reality—this Persian carpet, this Chinese puzzle box—cannot accommodate our request,

NOW THEREFORE, we pray for their Relief, Compensation, and Blessing outside and beyond this earthly life, including but not limited to

LOVE AND DELIGHT – Care, nurture and compassion; petting and play; reunion with friends, companions, offspring and mates; warm hugs, sweet tears on their fur for such as would like them. Silence and whale song and bird song. The grace of cold or heat or water, whatever is most pleasing, upon their fins and scales, upon their snouts and claws.

Romping through fields; sleeping in sun or shade, or curled in furry piles of boon companions. Leaping through oceans. For the predator, wild intrepid hunting. Glaciers beyond measure, or jungles thick and deep, whatever is their pleasure. Dark burrows filled with worms to eat, with no pain to the worms themselves. Infinite skies to fly in, great nests for their welcome home.

APPRECIATION – To know that they are wondrous and adored, their beauty or fierceness or humor seen, immeasurable contribution to the tapestry of life, loved by many, many, many of their fellow creatures, and most of all, by You. And that we aspire to love them as they are, not as we imagine them to be.

EVOLUTION – For those who wish, higher levels, new insight and knowledge, a Light to their intelligence: lizard to dragon, parrot to phoenix. For those who wish, a dancing with Your angels, a conscious journey toward Your Nearness.

WE PLEAD, PRAY, AND DEMAND, of Your Justice and Compassion, all this and more, since what we conceive for them is the groping of a blind mouse in a dark tunnel, the philosophy of a microbe, against Your Love and Knowledge, Secret Beloved, Nearest of the Near.

YOU KNOW AND WE DO NOT KNOW, but of Your Justice and Compassion, we humbly request this Relief and Compensation for all the Animals.

SETTING OUR HAND, PAW, HOOF, AND SEAL to this document, this Day of Our Lord, December 19, 2019/ 20 Rabi’ al-Akhir, 1441 A.H.

Karima Vargas Bushnell, Friend of Halycon Sage and the Squidren; F. Atty. Lumpkin, Esq., Discarnate Attorney at Large in the Multiverse; No-Name Stupid, a Horse of Great Resources

Amin. So may it be.

P.S. And for the trees, too!

P.P.S. Drawing by Faye Howell, illustrator of The Book of Squidly Light.

To learn more about the cat Fatty Lumpkin, Esq and the Resourceful Horse, go to www.halyconsage.com