The Animals’ Eden

The Animals’ Eden is a huge, beautiful walled garden where all pets go until such time as their human companions can join them. (Although only pet animals go to this walled garden, there are other special places for all the other animals, and especially beautiful places for animals who have suffered while on Earth, since their souls need peace and healing before they can move on.) 

The garden is full of lawns and hedges, flower borders and shrubs, wildflower meadows and red brick patios. All of this is surrounded by a beautiful decorative wall, just like an English garden from the Middle Ages, but much, much larger - so large that none of the animals feel as though they are in any way enclosed. 

All the pets who have passed into the Animals’ Eden and are waiting for their special humans are free to do whatever they want, and because it is a heavenly place, none of them wants to do anything that would harm their animal friends. The horses and ponies graze and gallop in the meadows. The dogs romp on the lawns and sniff in the shrubberies. The cats lounge on the patios, basking in the sunshine, or take their ease in the dappled shade of the great oak trees. Birds are no longer caged, but fly free in the trees, eating the plentiful fruits and berries. None of them actually feel hungry, but are provided with heavenly food if they wish, so long as they can eat without harming the others waiting alongside them. The garden has every kind of animal who has ever been a pet and who has someone special to wait for. 

There is a beautiful arch is the garden wall, the sort of brick arch that might have held a wrought iron gate in earthly gardens. Sometimes one or more of the animals gets a funny feeling, a bit like butterflies in the tummy. Those animals stop their playing or basking, and make their way to the archway. They sense that something special is about to happen. 

When they reach the gate they can see that their special human is walking toward the archway. Then, because the Animals’ Eden is a place for animals only, those animals can pass through the arch to join their human friends, and walk together in the sunshine on the next stage of their souls’ journey. 

For although the garden is a beautiful and happy place, there is nothing more joyful than a reunion between dear friends who have been apart too long.

(Author unknown)