Somewhere in the dark recesses of time, before humans had a history, we were utterly alone on this spinning ball of dirt. Pathetic, hairless creatures tottering about on two legs, whose very survival as a species was in doubt from day to day. Hated or feared by every other creature on the face of this planet.

No one knows how it happened. At the time, no one realized it was important enough to remember, even in the ancient myths. It could have happened in a thousand different ways. Probably it did happen in a thousand different ways in a thousand different places.

Maybe one night, a thin, dirty wolf cub, lost from its mother, cold and hungry, crept up to our campfire because it was too young and too tired to know to be scared of us. And, for some reason that will remain ever obscure, some one of us opened his or her heart wide enough to offer it a scrap of food, to pull it into their lap, and to hold it until it warmed and fell asleep, instead of killing it and eating it. Maybe they were lonely.

Maybe some one of us awoke one foggy morning to see a wild cat creeping among the grain piled at the edge of the camp catching rats and had the sense not to throw a rock and chase it away. Maybe they were lonely, too.

However it happened, it changed our lives, our societies, our very souls in ways so mysterious and yet so common that we hardly ever think about them.

They guard us, our children, our homes, our property. They guide and protect our flocks and take them where we say. They warn us of approaching danger. They hunt and catch and kill and bring to us other animals for our food. They pull and carry our burdens. They look for us when we cannot see and listen for us when we cannot hear and smell what we cannot smell. They catch our criminals. They rescue us from floods and fires and earthquakes and fallen buildings that we bring down around our own ears. They fight with us and for us, unflinchingly placing their lives between ours and danger, whether from our own kind, from other animals, or even from their own kind.

Most amazingly of all, they stay with us. These creatures, of all the millions of creatures on this earth, choose to be with us. They stay not because we force them, or because they are penned or tied or hobbled, but because they choose to stay. They stay because they like us.

They provide the comfort of another soul to stand or sit or lie by our side, no matter how desperate our straits, no matter how foolishly we have conducted our lives, no matter how poorly we have lived. They are always there, not only tolerating, but seeking our touch, our look, our presence. They thrive when they are with us and wither when we are away.

They share our joy. They adopt our anger as their own. They bristle with our fear. They lift us from our despair. And so, we are no longer alone in this world.

As both cause and effect of this bond of love and loyalty which they alone of all other animals offer us, we have bred them and crafted the world in which we all must live in such ways that they can no longer survive without our care. Our modern world has been made too dangerous and their instincts have been too molded by our hand for them to safely exist except as our wards. Even so, when we look into their eyes as our hand strokes their heads, we see that in our touch is their complete joy.

How have we rewarded this perfection of love and loyalty?

With many, we have rewarded it well. They live happy, interesting, pampered lives, doing what they love to do with the humans they love, cared for well and treated with respect.

For many others, we have rewarded their faith with treachery. We keep them and use them only so long as it suits our selfishness to do so and then we discard them, as if they were only so much kitchen garbage to be thrown out overnight and carried away in the morning. And when they are discarded, thrown out, homeless, we chase them and catch them and kill them. This is the human response to our truest friends.

We have all heard the story of the Rainbow Bridge. That place where all our beloved pets who have died before us wait for us, in death as they always did in life, playing together, but always alert for our arrival, so that at that joyful reunion, we and they can cross over into eternity together.

The millions of pets who died homeless in this country this year will wait at the Rainbow Bridge forever. No one comes for them. With the arrival of each beloved human companion, they will watch the reunion with curious, sad eyes, eyes that follow as the reunited cross the Rainbow Bridge, and be left forever behind, to repeat that sad observation into infinity. They, who we have made to love us and then abandoned and killed, are alone forever.

It is in my nature, as I believe it is in the nature of all humans, to want to find someone to blame for a wrong. And certainly our treatment of homeless animals is a great wrong. Over the last years I have carefully searched the halls of my knowledge, looking from room to room, searching every dark corner where all the secrets are hidden, to find the culprit responsible for our horrible crime. I tell you tonight, without any possibility of error, that I have found him. I am him.

For years I have known what we were doing to our homeless friends and I turned away and remained silent and occupied myself with the things of my life. Even after I found the compassion to speak up on their behalf, I spoke only to demand that someone else save them. Even then I failed to lift a finger of my own hand to help. Meanwhile, thousands of our friends, who lived for nothing other than to serve us, died, alone and unwanted.

Even now, when I have turned my hand and heart and mind to the task of saving them, I fail. I sleep when they need my alertness. I play when their lives depend on my work. I purchase lifeless things when my money could save their lives.

And so, I learn something about myself and I am humbled. I learn that I lack the courage of Toby, my tiny 15 pound terrier. I lack the endurance of Cherokee, my golden retriever. I lack the enthusiasm of MacIntyre, my springer spaniel. I lack the vigilance of George, my lhasa apso. I lack the patience of Gracie, my minature schnauzer, I lack the grace of Spike and Snuggles, my cats. I lack the selfless love of Emmitt, my miniature poodle.

I learn that I am . . . only human. Far from having any rightful claim to be crowned emperor of this creation, I am unable to be even its competent steward.

But, as a human, I am endowed with one powerful, frightening ability that is curse and blessing mixed and tangled all into one. Do you search for what sets us apart from other animals? Do you search for what makes humans unique? It is not our intelligence or our emotion or our language or our spirituality or even our morality. If anything, we fall short of our friends in most of these ways.

We, alone of all creation, have acquired the power to change how things are.

And for that, we will be judged by our Creator.

I give you my word, my oath, my pledge on all that is sacred to me, that the day will come, and is now coming, to Austin, Texas, when we will no longer kill our friends because they are lost or abandoned. Not because of me, but because of us. Because of the solemn determination of all those gathered here tonight that together we will change how things are.

Thanks for caring about our pets.

Jim and Judy

The above is a speech given by Jim Collins at the 1998 Homeless Animals Day Candlelight Vigil. I was honored to hear him present it again in 2000. Jim and Judy Collins formed AustinPetsAlive! and dedicate much of their time and energy to helping Austin's homeless and unwanted animals.