Preface

Pet ownership can be one of the most fulfilling experiences in one’s eternal life and yet the responsibility of caring for the wellbeing of another living being—however inferior—is not something that can be considered trivial.

It is not enough for a pet owner to simply fulfill the physical needs of their charges. Even the most primitively intelligent of beings require more than just food, water, and shelter to live holistically. Humans are among the most intelligent of domesticable species and thus possess psychological and spiritual needs beyond what one might expect of less sophisticated creatures.

As a new or prospective owner of a human pet, it is important for you, dear reader, to understand that as the superior being, you are possessed of the Moral Imperative to ensure that your charge leads a joyful and fulfilling existence. It is my hope that you will find the wisdom you need in these pages.

The advice in this volume must not be taken as hard and fast rules of human ownership. Compiled in this text are suggestions borne from many cycles of research and experience that may be broadly applicable but not necessarily appropriate for all circumstances.

It is of vital importance to remember that all creatures have personalities of their own. As pseudointelligent beings, humans exhibit an even greater breadth and complexity of personalities than most domesticable creatures. This high degree of variance between humans introduces a need for nuance in their care that might not be necessary when it comes to other pets.

While not all of the advice in these pages might be relevant to you and your human, much of it is likely to apply. While each human is a unique individual, they are nevertheless still human and thus possess similar needs and desires—such things that have been exhaustively examined by human behaviorists over the cycles.

By carefully learning what makes your particular human tick, you will hopefully be able to adapt the advice given here to best fit their unique personality and become a veteran owner of a well-trained human.

Chapter 1 — What is a Human?

Homo pseudosapiens (humans) are a species of bibrachial bipedal great ape. They are viviparous and reproduce primarily through sexual means, with enough sexual dimorphism between the two main sexes that in most cases, humans can be sexed at a glance.

In the wild, they subsist on a highly varied omnivorous diet and are known to best flourish in captivity when provided similarly diverse sustenance. Despite being generalists, they are capable of great feats of strength and endurance exceeded only by highly-specialized species in their natural environment.

They are highly intelligent, social creatures. In the wild they congregate in loose communities of hundreds to many tens of millions. They have a high capacity for learning and situational adaptation and possess highly complex emotional selves.

Humans are among a small handful of domesticable species with the ability to grasp fragments of Universal Truth despite their very narrow band of perception. They are capable of creating mental constructs and abstractions that allow them to glean insights beyond their natural abilities to perceive.

They are so adept at finding patterns and making predictions that they can do so subconsciously. This allows them to intuitively solve difficult problems that can involve complex dynamical interactions between multiple systems, often despite having incomplete information.

Despite their remarkable capabilities, humans are also considerably fragile. Having evolved in an environment largely isolated from the Greater Cosmos, they are ill-equipped to grapple with threats that even infant Immortals may find trivial.

Even in their natural habitat, humans are considered uniquely vulnerable. They do not have the wicked claws, sharp teeth, or tough hides that their co-evolved species use to survive. Instead, they rely on their intelligence and build tools that mimic these adaptations—tools that are ill-suited to survival in the Greater Cosmos.

As such, despite their apparent independence, humans must be treated with great care to ensure their wellbeing. Domesticated humans must be kept in controlled environments and only allowed to explore the Greater Cosmos under strict and vigilant supervision.

Wild Humans

In the wild, human populations are known to congregate in complex, stratified social collectives known on the highest level as "nations" or "nation-states."

While it may be tempting to view these collectives as monolithic, such is not the case. Humans have a predilection to form groups and sub-groups inside groups and sub-groups and may consider themselves members of more than one such subdivision at any given point in time with varying levels of allegiance to each.

Initial observations of wild humans suggested that they may be the embryonic stage of an intelligent species that may one day join the Greater Unison. Such discoveries are rare enough that it was considered imperative to study them further. Further research, however, ruled out the possibility.

The incredible fragmentation of their social collectives, when discovered, laid to rest any notion that they might one day rise to join the Greater Unison. Nowadays, this splintering is understood to be the result of wild humans’ lack of capacity for higher-order empathetic communion—a vital prerequisite for true intelligence.

This is not to say that wild humans utterly lack empathy. If such were the case, their social collectives would not have proved so cohesive over time. Instead, wild humans are limited only to zeroth-order empathetic communion—with members of their immediate social circle—and first-order empathetic communion—with individuals who share ideologies, beliefs, or traits, physical and mental, that mark them as belonging to the same general group of humans.

Their inability to properly inhabit and internalize the psychological and emotional state of distant members of their species is what reinforces the boundaries between groups of humans. They are able to understand and empathize with the members of their own groups, but non-members are cold and alien—untrustworthy and unempathetic.

This friction inevitably leads to conflict big and small. In the time that the Greater Unison has been observing the human world, they have participated in no fewer than three large-scale military engagements with countless smaller conflicts between and amongst the many different social strata of their communities.

This is not to say that wild humans are constantly embroiled in battle. Indeed, they are capable of great feats of cooperation. They are, however, prone to make selfish and individualistic choices.

Interestingly, they possess the intelligence and introspection necessary to recognize that such attitudes would only serve to hamper their advancement as a species. Consequently, they have developed social systems to allow for progress through forced cooperation.

These systems are still based on adversarial principles as wild humans have never truly evolved to overcome the gulf between the just self and the dangerous other, but their ingenuity has given them the ability to exploit their self-interest to restrain their species’ most self-destructive tendencies.

Predictably, these systems are not perfect and are at times exploited and subverted by wild humans to serve their self-interest instead of the species’ collective interests. Case in point: the humans’ natural habitat of Terra is, at the time of this writing, facing an unprecedented climate catastrophe—an existential threat to the human race—and yet attempts to rectify the situation are frustrated at every turn by the aristocratic and ruling strata of many of their nations.

It is in such dire circumstances that the human capacity for cooperation truly shines. Though it is hobbled by their inability to empathize with those outside their immediate groups, the pressure applied by external crises gives wild humans the ability to temporarily set aside their differences.

Though wild humans on Terra have much work to do to avert the oncoming threat, they have begun to take steps. They now recognize that the systems they built are inadequate and ill-equipped to handle their current circumstances and they are wresting control back from the self-interests of the upper strata of their society.

One might be forgiven for thinking that a wild human would make for an exceptional pet considering their demonstrated resilience and adaptability but there is one quality inherent to the species that makes them difficult to keep as pets without exhaustive training: they suffer from an inflated sense of self-importance.

Humans believe themselves to be the supreme and sole intelligent species in their home world. They have given themselves the name Homo sapiens sapiens, wisest of the wise men.

Naturally, this belief is mistaken. Perhaps it derives from the absence of species with comparable intelligence in their home cosmos, or perhaps it is the result of their inability to grasp the concept of true intelligence, but regardless, this belief is mistaken. This much is obvious upon closer scrutiny.

Nevertheless, this collective delusion is so strong and so deeply entrenched that wild humans struggle to accept the truth. As a result they can be combative and hostile when introduced to the ownership of an Immortal. Although largely harmless thanks to their lack of natural defenses, their resourcefulness and tenacity can nevertheless lead to considerable inconvenience and property damage.

The domesticated human, on the other hand, is far easier to work with.

The Domesticated Human

Unlike the wild human, domesticated humans (Homo pseudosapiens domesticum) are born and reared within the social framework of the Greater Unison. As such, they are aware of the origins of their species and the shortcomings thereof.

They accept that their place is to serve as pets—that they will be at their happiest when placed in the care of an Immortal owner. They recognize that their purpose is to provide companionship and enrichment for their masters and are predisposed to fierce loyalty once they have developed an emotional and empathetic bond with their owners.

While wild humans the truth to be abhorrent on a primal level, domesticated humans lack this revulsion as they are not socialized from birth to believe that they are exceptional. Indeed, they understand that they are animals—highly advanced animals, but animals nonetheless—lacking the true intelligence of their betters.

Domesticated humans are believed to be more evolved than their feral counterparts. The bond between a human and their Immortal master gives them the ability to touch the extremities of higher-order empathetic communion. They remain unable to initiate such on their own, but a skilled owner can draw them into communion, which they can happily inhabit with sufficient training.

Research shows that domesticated humans in empathetic communion—whether by sharing an owner with multiple others or by being part of a collectively-owned human community—are far happier, more altruistic, and more cooperative than their wild counterparts.

Groups of communed humans lack the strata and hierarchies that tend to develop in wild human communities and do not exhibit the fracturing and splintering that is so typical thereof. Conflict is virtually non-existent, both within and without the group.

Absent the inherent physical and existential threats of their natural environment, domesticated humans are able to more openly exhibit their natural curiosity than their wild counterparts. They explore their world with vivre and have an endless thirst for novel experiences.

It would behoove the prospective owner of a domesticated human to truly strive to understand this aspect of their psyche. A pet human flourishes best when introduced to new experiences on a semi-regular basis.

Another thing to note about domesticated humans is that they are very sexually motivated. While this is true of wild humans as well, domesticated humans do not have the same inhibitions as their feral counterparts and freely express their need and desire for sexual satisfaction.

Most commonly, this manifests as domesticated humans seeking sexual intimacy with their owners. This is normal, and a natural consequence of human ownership that is worth keeping in mind when considering getting one as a pet.

Domesticated humans do not make for a good match with sex-averse Immortals. Domesticated humans that seek sexual gratification from their owners but are repeatedly denied—or worse, given gratification but with disinterest—are likely to suffer from psychological harm in the long term.

We will explore this topic further in a later section.

Chapter 2 — The Power of Empathy

It may seem peculiar to discuss empathy as regards humans when it is well-established that they are incapable of higher-order empathetic communion. This is only the case for truly wild humans.

As briefly discussed in the previous chapter, domesticated humans, while they remain unable to initiate higher-order empathetic communion themselves, are able to inhabit it when drawn in by a sufficiently skilled Immortal. The same is true of tamed humans.

The exact mechanism for this is poorly understood and may take many cycles yet to be thoroughly interrogated but nevertheless, it is well-known that humans are able to inhabit empathetic communion despite being unable to initiate it. While strange, this does not do them any harm. Instead, it may be the case that it is beneficial for humans to experience higher-order empathetic communion.

Research shows that even mere exposure to higher-order empathetic communion can be positive for humans. Tamed humans that briefly experience higher-order empathetic communion during their training exhibit higher degrees of amenability, altruism, and empathy, lower degrees of selfishness and greed, and are less likely to regress. These effects persist after exposure and last longer depending on the length of exposure. Domesticated humans that have never experienced empathetic communion also, on average, perform worse than those that have in the same metrics.

It is believed that exposure to higher-order empathetic communion stimulates the primitive empathetic centers of humans. Even if they are later withdrawn from higher-order empathetic communion, they are then able to use their considerable pseudointelligence to approximate true empathetic communion from then on.

These improvements are not restricted to humans that experience higher-order empathetic communion with other humans through an Immortal. Even a solitary human can benefit from being in communion with their owner. They become more attentive and are able to better anticipate their owner’s moods and needs. They exhibit lower rates of anxiety and depression than ownerless domesticated humans. And when they do, they have shorter, less intense episodes.

As such, it is recommended for human owners to expose humans to higher-order empathetic communion regularly and for human trainers and breeders to do so as soon as possible.

Chapter 3 — Human Procurement

Before an Immortal can own their first human, they are required by the framework of the Greater Unison to undertake and successfully complete a basic human ownership course, which includes a licensure examination.

Furthermore, owners of humans are required to successfully complete refresher courses at least once in every three cycles. This requirement narrows to once in the past quarter of a cycle in the event that an existing human owner would like to obtain one or more new humans.

Once an Immortal has obtained a human ownership license from the framework of the Greater Unison, they are ready to obtain their new companion. Broadly speaking, pet humans can be legally obtained in four different ways: purchasing from a licensed breeder, adopting from an accredited shelter, hiring a professional procurer, and obtaining special dispensation to capture one.

Each of these methods has positives and negatives which shall be discussed here. Ultimately, the method that you should choose is the one most compatible with your situation and your moral convictions.

Licensed Human Breeders

Obtaining a pet human from a licensed breeder is likely to be the most convenient option for most would-be owners. Typically, an interested Immortal need only examine the breeder’s stock of pet humans and, should they find one that strikes their fancy, pay the associated fees and costs.

All necessary paperwork should then be handled by the breeder. This includes pedigree documentation, associating the pet with the new owner’s license, medical and vaccination records, and an ownership turnover. At most reputable breeders, the entire process should take no more than twenty minutes.

There are a number of things that must be considered when purchasing a human from a breeder, however. First and foremost, it is of vital importance that a prospective owner ensure that the breeder they are purchasing from is reputable and in compliance with Greater Unison regulations.

The following are a few red flags a prospective owner can keep an eye out for:

1. Female humans
   • The use of female humans for breeding new human generations is barbaric and obsolete. New Greater Unison regulations forbid the sale, purchase, and ownership of female humans as pets. Furthermore, regulations on human breeding cover the use of only pre-approved fertility brands that ensure healthy, all-male litters.
2. Cages
   • While some humans have no trouble living in cages, the average human requires 8 talis to maintain its psychological wellbeing. While display cages are fine and indeed recommended for the safety of humans and prospective owners, a breeder that primarily keeps their humans in cages may not be treating them correctly.
3. Too Many Humans
   • A breeder with a large variety of humans available for sale may seem attractive at first glance, but it is important to consider whether the facilities are suitable to house so many humans at any given time. While domesticated humans are less prone to violence and conflict compared to their wild counterparts, overcrowding can nevertheless cause considerable physiological and psychological harm.
4. Absent Breeding Pairs
   • Under the framework of the Greater Unison, a prospective owner has the right to examine the breeding pair that produced a particular human and all the associated paperwork thereof. Before making a purchase final, one of the most important pieces of due diligence that a prospective owner can undertake is to ask for the breeding pair to be shown alongside the offspring for comparison—and to confirm that the pedigree of the human is credible.
   • If a breeder is cagey or refuses to present the breeding pair and accompanying documentation upon request, it is recommended that the prospective owner step away from the transaction and report the incident to the authorities. Electing to proceed with the transaction may lead to the purchase of a human with questionable provenance or worse, becoming accessory to the crime of commerce involving illegal and improperly documented humans, which carries a hefty fine and potential detention, based on the jurisdiction in which the purchase was made.

While the above list covers the most important considerations to make when approaching a human breeder, it is important to note that it is by no means exhaustive.

For the sake of our human pets, it is incumbent in all prospective human owners to be vigilant. As superior beings, Immortals must be stewards of lesser folk and part of that responsibility is ensuring that unsavory characters are not rewarded for their behavior.

While it is easy to opt for the convenience of purchasing from a breeder, the general ease of the process does not absolve the prospective owner of the responsibility of doing their due diligence and ensuring that they are obtaining their humans from conscientious, respectable, and ethical breeders.

Accredited Human Shelters

Though the framework of the Greater Unison provides safety and security for all Immortals that live under its auspices, the Greater Cosmos is a cruel and merciless place.

Immortals are not invincible and while uncommon, it is not unheard of for an Immortal to suffer debilitating accidents that may take thousands of cycles to recover from. In rare cases, Immortals may suffer from a total eradication of the Tripartite Being—a concept lesser beings such as humans may equate with death.

Though often any pet humans these unfortunate individuals have are remanded into the custody of relatives, in severe cases, they are taken in by institutions that have been accredited by the framework of the Greater Unison. These facilities are specially equipped to rehabilitate pet humans that have often been through traumatic separation from their masters.

As accredited shelters are directly supervised by the framework of the Greater Unison, there is little to fear with regard to their treatment of humans. Humans brought to accredited shelters lead rich, fulfilling lives, albeit ones devoid of owners until they are adopted out.

Note, however, that choosing to adopt a human from an accredited shelter is far from convenient. Indeed, to do so may require navigating a substantial amount of red tape. The framework of the Greater Unison goes to great lengths to ensure that humans in shelters find their way to good homes and this is directly reflected in the number of checks that prospective adopters must pass.

Nevertheless, if a prospective owner can stomach the process and successfully apply to adopt a human from an accredited shelter, doing so is widely considered a noble and compassionate act. Humans at accredited shelters have experienced, through no fault of their won, a dramatic overturning of their lives and the loss of their homes. By adopting one, a prospective owner soothes the wounds in the human’s heart and fills the void left behind by the owner they once had.

Needless to say, adopting a human from an accredited shelter is not an easy task. Even beyond the bureaucracy that surrounds the mechanisms for ensuring that rescued humans are sent to good homes, rescued humans themselves can pose a unique challenge for prospective owners.

Owing to their nature as highly-social creatures, humans are particularly vulnerable to psychological distress resulting from unexpected and traumatic separation from important figures in their lives. This necessitates a greater degree of care and attentiveness when taking in a rescued human.

As such, beginners should consider obtaining their first human from a breeder unless they can rely upon the wisdom and supervision of a more experienced human owner.

Hiring a Professional Procurer

Trying to find a human companion at an accredited shelter or a licensed breeder can be a game of chance. If a prospective owner is looking for something specific, there is a possibility that they might not find what they desire at the aforementioned places.

For prospective owners of particular taste, a potential option is to hire a professional human procurer to obtain a human that matches their tastes. As such an undertaking requires a considerable amount of effort and resources, this option is the most expensive. Furthermore, depending on how stringent a prospective owner’s requirements are, this option may also take the most time.

In exchange, a prospective owner is more likely to be matched with the human of their dreams through a professional procurer than through breeders and shelters.

Part of the cost of hiring a procurer is getting access to their network of contacts and resources, which reaches further than any Immortal can on their own.

Reputable procurers obtain their leads from fellow procurers and provide them with leads in turn. In this way, they can be alerted when a human that matches their clients’ requirements becomes available—even if that human is halfway across the Greater Cosmos.

Furthermore, professional procurers have other means of obtaining humans. Most have contracts with licensed hunters and trappers who can visit the humans’ natural habitats to catch a wild human for a prospective owner.

Most reputable procurers also have connections to human training centers, where a wild-caught human can be tamed and brought into the harmony of the framework of the Greater Unison. These added services naturally cost more, but for the discerning human owner, the price is often worth the final product.

While disreputable procurers are quickly weeded out by Greater Unison regulations and their fellow procurers, it is still important that a prospective human owner do their due diligence.

A prospective owner has a right to any and all documentation associated with the procurement of their human, down to the licenses of hunters and trappers that may have been involved in the process.

Furthermore, a prospective owner should ensure that their procurer of choice has a valid license to procure humans for clients. Indeed, the furnishing of a valid license should be the first step of any negotiation with a professional procurer.

Capturing Your Own Human

This method of obtaining a human will not be covered at length in this book as a short section cannot do justice to the complexity of this undertaking.

We cannot, however, advise that prospective owners opt for this choice. Not only is obtaining the special dispensation required prohibitively difficult, attempting to capture a wild human is incredibly challenging at every step—to say nothing of the expense and difficulty of taming said human.

That this option is mentioned at all in this volume is the result of considerable deliberation. It is here because we do not believe in wilfully obscuring information from prospective owners and so that we can adequately warn against following this path.

Even should the prospective owner desire a wild-caught human, it is, in most cases, far more cost-and-time-effective to hire a professional procurer to obtain one. The ‘thrill of the hunt,’ as some might describe it, is not worth the risk to the unprepared.

The authors of this volume wholeheartedly and categorically recommend against taking this path.

Chapter 4 — Human Care: Food

Conventional wisdom suggests that humans are paradoxically easy and difficult to care for at the same time. They can be remarkably independent and self-sufficient at times, which might lull an inexperienced owner into a false sense of security. Seeing this, it is entirely understandable that one might imagine a hands-off approach to the care of their human is acceptable.

In reality, there is no such thing as a healthy hands-off approach to the care of a human. Their unique vulnerability to psychological harms and their lack of defenses against the threats inherent to the Greater Cosmos ultimately necessitate close supervision even when they are being self-sufficient.

As briefly mentioned in an earlier chapter, humans are able to subsist on mixed diets of meat and plant matter. This does not mean, however, that it is healthy—or indeed acceptable—to feed a pet human from an Immortal’s table scraps. This is especially true of wild-caught humans.

Quantity and frequency of feeding are two things that new human owners can often get wrong. Humans are capable of consuming more food than they strictly required, storing the excess as fat. This is an evolutionary adaptation which allows them to survive times of food scarcity.

Under the auspices of the framework of the Greater Unity, however, humans are regularly fed by their owners. If the size and frequency of meals are not controlled, humans can become overweight and develop a number of physiological problems.

Variety is another important consideration to make. This is not only with regard to the types of food that are given to a pet human, but also to the meals themselves.

Humans thrive best with a variety of foods in their meals. While many are perfectly happy consuming only meat or only plants, human health is best promoted with a mixed diet of both.

Furthermore, while most non-sapient pets may be happy receiving the same meals at every feeding time, this is not the case for humans. Humans thrive on a variety of experiences and being forced to consume the same meal—however luxurious—can result in substantial harm.

For this reason it is suggested that human owners make a list of a dozen or so different meals that can be rotated every two or three milli-cycles. This number of meals should suffice to keep the human’s diet varied enough to prevent harm.

Human owners should, however, be encouraged to experiment with meals for their pets. These ‘experimental’ meals need not become a part of the regular rotation but if the human displays a particular desire for one in particular, it may be worth considering reintroducing the meal for special occasions or as a reward for good behavior.

Chapter 5 — Human Care: Physical Hygiene

A clean home is a healthy home, as the saying goes. Humans are no different. Though remarkably resistant to the pathogens that exist in their natural habitat, they have yet to develop defenses against those that exist in the Greater Cosmos.

In their natural environment, humans can protect themselves from pathogenic threats by creating artificial body coverings—not dissimilar to what we Immortals call clothes—that protect their skin from topical infection.

In the event that pathogens enter their bodies, wild humans make use of rudimentary concoctions that can be injected or ingested. These either directly fight infections or train their bodies to resist pathogens in a manner reminiscent of medicines and vaccinations as we understand them.

While these behaviors suited them in their home world, they are not to be encouraged under the auspices of the framework of the Greater Unison. Humans are at their happiest when allowed to be in their natural, uncovered state. This is typically not a problem with domesticated humans but tamed humans may sometimes retain the socialized need to cover up. Any such requests must be denied and discouraged. Over time, the impulse will fade and they will learn to enjoy their natural state.

As humans are otherwise defenseless, proper hygiene is necessary to protect them from threats posed by the Greater Cosmos. It is highly recommended that an owner establish a routine for their human. Tamed humans, especially, are likely to resist the necessary measures to keep them healthy. A regular schedule, in this case, would help them to acclimate.

Baths

As with many pets, bathing is a simple but effective means of protecting humans from external threats. Mundane water may be sufficient to cleanse a human’s body of pathogens endemic to their native habitat, but in order to protect them from threats originating from the Greater Cosmos, spiritual water is recommended as a cheap, abundant, and safe alternative.

Some humans—especially wild-caught and "free-range" domesticated humans—may initially resist spiritual water baths. Fortunately, their reluctance is typically temporary as spiritual water is soothing, slightly euphoric, and mildly intoxicating for humans.

Indeed, once a human becomes accustomed to spiritual water, owners may find themselves with the opposite problem. Humans, despite their innate desire for novelty, are habit-forming creatures. Some may develop a dependence on spiritual water induced euphoria and actively seek it out. While relatively harmless, such behavior should be discouraged to prevent the development of addiction.

While a simple spell may prove convenient for bathing a pet human, many human behaviorists would recommend engaging manually with them instead. The physical intimacy of such an act helps develop and nourish the empathetic bond between pet and master.

Wild-caught and "free-range" humans may initially resist being bathed and physically touched by their owners. In such cases, an owner might let their human soak in spiritual water for a few minutes before touching them.

Doing so will lower the human’s inhibitions and make them more agreeable but this does not mean that the human will accept anything their owner does. It is important to remain gentle and careful even if the human is in this more suggestible state. Boundaries should be pushed little by little until the human is comfortable enough with their owner to enjoy their bath without needing to soak first.

Sexual Arousal

It is not uncommon for a human to become aroused while their owner is cleansing their body. They are highly sexual creatures and their naked flesh is remarkably sensitive. Arousal is all but guaranteed during baths. This is natural and should not be cause for alarm.

It may be preferable to encourage this behavior as humans are sexually motivated and indulging their arousal may lead the human to associate bath time with pleasure. Owners might make a game of it, stimulating the human’s genitalia as part of the cleansing of that area.

Whether to permit a human’s climax is at the discretion of their owner. It has been shown that continual denial of release can have the opposite effect and lead to negative association with the process.

As such, it is recommended that an owner allow their human to climax during their bath. This does not necessarily mean that the human should be allowed to climax during every bath. Indeed, it is important not to develop the expectation of such.

Sexual pleasure alone is enough to develop a positive association with bathing. A climax on occasion, potentially as a reward for exceptionally good behavior, serves to prevent negative association and engender further positive feelings about the process.

This is a tried and true strategy that extends beyond simple matters of hygiene and will be discussed in later parts of this volume.

Internal Hygiene

Once an owner has thoroughly cleansed the exterior of their pet human’s body, it is time to clean the interior thereof. Unfortunately, many owners neglect the internal hygiene of their humans, in part because all humans—domesticated or otherwise—instinctively balk at the notion, making the process fraught. It is, however, vitally important to a human’s continued safety and wellbeing to ensure that the inside of their body remains free of infectious or otherwise malignant entities.

Humans’ reluctance when it comes to the process owes to the considerable discomfort that it causes them. While their bodies are adapted to accept and even enjoy penetration, this has limits that do not typically include what is necessary to ensure their insides are clean.

As with all things, there are strategies to mitigate humans’ discomfort and train them to eventually enjoy their internal cleansing. First and foremost, the best time to perform an internal cleansing of your human is right after or right at the end of a bath. Their lowered inhibitions and the euphoric effect of spiritual water eases the discomfort that they feel as a result of internal cleansing.

Furthermore, it is advisable to take advantage of humans’ sexual motivation. They are wired to find penetration pleasurable and much of the discomfort of internal cleansing is related to the volume of spiritual water that needs to enter them. As such, it is recommended that an owner use a finger, a tentacle, or some other relatively slender appendage to gradually push spiritual water into their human.

While more laborious and time-consuming than simply using an enema or a hose, the pleasure that results will establish a positive association with the process. Done gradually enough, even the discomfort of being overfull can become associated with sexual pleasure, which will help make future internal cleansings a lot less stressful on all parties involved.

It is recommended that the first few times a human is given a thorough internal cleansing that they be allowed an orgasm to help solidify the association of internal cleansing with sexual pleasure. Climaxes can then be gradually restricted to incentivize desired behaviors such as keeping still during internal cleansing or holding the spiritual water inside as long as possible.

Body Hair

In their distant past, wild humans were likely covered in fur like most mammals. This would have served to protect their bodies from pathogens and the elements. Over time, however, humans have gradually lost their capacity to grow fur. Indeed, even the most hirsute of humans have coats that are considered sparse at best, with considerable variety between different breeds and even within them.

It is highly advised that pet humans be kept smooth and hairless from the upper lip down. Thick clumps of hair in the armpits and pubic regions, in particular, are liable to trap dirt and pathogens that can pose a threat to the human’s wellbeing.

Simple magical treatments exist to permanently depilate pet humans should an owner wish to do away with the tedium of regular shaving. However, much like manually bathing humans can improve the bond between pet and owner, so too can shaving.

Some prospective owners may enjoy the aesthetic of wildness that body hair gives their humans. While this can be accomplished with glamour, some may prefer the genuine article. While this is not advisable, such owners must be extra-vigilant when it comes to protecting their companion from disease and infection.

This may come in the form of more frequent baths or more thorough ones. While spiritual water on its own is usually enough for shorn humans, hairy humans might require the use of soaps, foams, gels, or other such substances specially formulated to kill pathogens while being human-safe.

Fortunately, some humans are known to enjoy the extra attention. They are fascinated by froth and take pleasure in the slippery sensation provided by the like. It is not uncommon for lathered-up humans to rub themselves—or rub up against their owners if they’re better trained. As such, the use of such substances might be worth considering even for the owners of hairless humans.

Chapter 6 — Human Care: Non-physical Hygiene

The humans’ natural habitat is a primarily physical plane of existence. As such, nearly all of their adaptations are geared towards physical threats. This makes caring for their physical hygiene fairly straightforward.

On the contrary, humans have practically no defenses against threats spiritual, psychological, and metaphysical. Fortunately, Immortals are well-suited to dealing with these sorts of threats.

Nevertheless, it is here that a human owner must be most vigilant. While humans may go without baths for some time and remain healthy, even brief lapses in non-physical hygiene can result in considerable harm.

Humans possess powerful minds. This much is uncontroversial. Regrettably, they lack true intelligence and as such have very little control over their mental prowess. As such, while they possess some mental defenses, they cannot control these consciously.

While these mental defenses are weak and incapable of harming Immortals, their uncontrolled, instinctive nature means that more often than not, they can turn on the very human they are supposed to protect. Therefore, it is advisable to only attend to humans’ non-physical hygiene while their mental defenses are lowered.

Humans’ mental defenses are at their weakest shortly after being given a bath. The euphoric effect of spiritual water acts as a sedative, blocking the humans’ mental defenses from interfering with necessary maintenance of their non-physical hygiene.

When a human’ mental defenses have been sufficiently subdued, owners should enter their human’s mindscape and spend as little time as possible therein. Human minds, despite belonging to inferior beings, are very powerful but also very fragile. Minimizing time spent in their minds lessens the chance of causing inadvertent damage.

Fortunately for humans and their owners, humans’ relatively minuscule and finite being makes them slim pickings for the Greater Cosmos’ most hazardous threats. This is not to say that they are not in grave danger. Even the weakest of threats still pose a considerable risk of harm for humans. What this does mean, however, is that most human owners should have the ability to address any potential problems with ease.

Invasive, parasitic thoughtforms are the most common threat to humans. It is not uncommon to find a handful of these every time a human is subjected to a mental cleansing. These may seem initially harmless, but they must not be allowed to fester.

The most common type of parasitic thoughtform is one that infests most wild-caught and "free-range" humans: the delusion that they somehow possess true intelligence. These are also the most dangerous.

These particular thoughtforms can make use of humans’ considerable intellectual faculties to grow stronger. They are known to be able to leap across the species barrier. A handful of cases describe Immortals who spontaneously develop the belief that humans are intelligent beings despite all the evidence to the contrary.

If allowed to fester, this thoughtform can eventually manifest in distress, mistrust in the framework of the Greater Unison, development of violent impulses, and increasingly severe emotional outbursts about the unfairness and immorality of treating humans as the animals that they are.

Fortunately, this type of thoughtform is relatively weak. Immortals recover from their parasitism without the need for intervention in most cases, while it is a simple matter to remove the thoughtform from human minds.

The other most common parasitic thoughtform in humans is the notion that humans are somehow equal to Immortals. This is patently false. Humans lack true intelligence, which is the most basic prerequisite for equality.

Other common thoughtforms that parasitize humans include concepts of self-determination, the desire to make their own choices, the idea that humans do not need owners, and the belief that they have a greater purpose beyond service to their Immortal owners. All of these must be removed.

As these thoughtforms naturally resist removal, the aftermath of cleaning a human’s mind typically involves some damage to their psyche. This is fortunately easy to resolve.

Owners can create and use more positive thoughtforms to replace the removed parasitic thoughtforms. Feelings of love and loyalty for the owner, a need to serve, a desire to be a good companion, and pride at being an owned pet are some of the most common substitute thoughtforms used for this purpose.

The function of these thoughtform patches is threefold. First and foremost, they provide a scaffold around which the human’s mind can heal. Second, they deepen the human’s bond with their owner. Last but not least, these thoughtforms serve to inoculate the human against other problematic thoughtforms, acting as a second line of defense as they grow and become integrated into the human’s mind.

An owner should take care to search for and remove any such thoughtforms but sometimes they can be difficult to find. Human minds are complex and thoughtforms can squirrel away into hard-to-reach corners. The "free will" thoughtform in particular is known to be stubborn.

As such, it is recommended that as a final step, owners use their consciousness to figuratively "wash" their human’s mind. Doing so should suffocate any remaining undesirable thoughtforms and nourish the implanted ones, improving the human’s mental health and ability to accept their circumstances.