Is it just me, or is the story really on the nose? The horse is a redneck parody, the lion is Trump, the scientists are suicidally empathetic socialists, and the cat girl is a self-hating, immigrant-loving liberal Karen. The whole thing sounds suspiciously similar to the open-border crisis, and the author appears to be a pro-immigration liberal who doesn't understand nuances.
Meanwhile, the lion is the only sane official if you think about it rationally, ignoring the emotionally charged scene where the author is trying to portrait him as unreasonable. The technological knowledge that the main character brought is too dangerous for a society of low-IQ animals. The "stupid conservative reactionaries" are right to try to get rid of him. The only non-destructive knowledge he possesses is probably agricultural, and even that can backfire depending on how it's used. Like medicine, science is a good thing when it makes small advancements, but huge leaps are absolutely poisonous. The MC would never be worth the risk just because of his "diverse cultural knowledge" or "a poor suffering immigrant" status.
Another character grounded in reality, the pig, also acts unreasonably, to the point that it looks comical. The author tries too hard to portray the lion and the pig as buffoons, clearly afraid that the reader will sympathize with the "wrong" side. I don't like it.
Now that I think about it, I realize that our governments irl would never tell us if we ever make contact with aliens. In order to preserve the status quo in the power structure and on the planet overall, they would try to limit the flow of information as much as possible, which is a good thing.
Overall, this story was far better as a one-shot.