"And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil" This is all metaphoric like everything in the bible, it meant early humans became intelligent, and could choose right or wrong, therefore heaven and hell was becoming open to humans.

Sadtruth, I said dogs have immortal souls, they go to heaven.Also because humans can reason, we are able to make intelligent and moral decisions; animals cannot. God did not create animals with the ability to choose right or wrong, to accept or reject salvation. Only humans were given this ability to reason. We gave that gift to dogs. Notice how most of the time when they do something wrong, they whimper or stare at you before you find out? They realize they have done wrong so that must mean they can tell between right and wrong, and thus it is assumed they can go to heaven.

He said they are like angels.

I asked a priest about this when I was little and that's the answer I got. Except the cat part