Animals

I don't know how I feel about the chapter of animal pain. I think that in order for this to be a worth while argument we need to decide if animals have souls. Personally I don't believe that animals have souls. I think that some of them have developed minds and that they do feel pain, however I don't believe that they are capable of believing in a Divine being. It's my belief that when I go to heaven and see my dog Jack that it will be because it would make me very happy, not because Jack was a good dog. At any rate I think that we can all agree that animals are not at the same level as we are, as far as importance to God, or intellect or whatever. ( I hope) Now, the reason I think this chapter is silly is, even if animals have pain, why would God pay attention to them, if he loves us more.
Lewis says in early chapters that God is held in his own set of rules. The world is a sort of chess game that God can't go around changing rules for all the time but can on occasion change things a little. My question is, does God change the rules and perform miracles, for the sake of animals? I sure hope not. If He does, He would be a little like the people that give their money to those commercials with Sarah McLachlan in them to save dogs or something, when there are PEOPLE dieing. Not such a good thing. I think the reasons animals feel pain is because that is the way that god created the world. He made it so that sometimes rocks fall, and sometime those rocks fall on us or animals I guess.