We need cats to need us. It unnerves us that they do not. However, if they do not need us, they nonetheless seem to love us.

After a lifetime of affectionate regard for dogs and many years of close observation and reflection, I have reached the conclusion that dogs feel more than I do (I am not prepared to speak for other people). They feel more, and they feel more purely and more intensely.

What struck me whenever I visited a farm was how much more sophisticated was the life the animals were capable of living than was assumed by those exploiting them. The more we are willing to see about their lives, the more we will see. Humans seem to take perverse pleasure in attributing stupidity to animals when it is almost always entirely a question of human ignorance.

Animals love and suffer, cry and laugh; their hearts rise up in anticipation and fall in despair...they feel.

Dogs love us not only because we feed them, walk them, or groom them, or protect them, but because we are fun. How astonishing!

The curiosity of cats is, like their affection, of a purity and intensity rarely seen in humans. We would be jaded when faced with the fiftieth paper bag. Not so our cats.

We need cats to need us. It unnerves us that they do not. However, if they do not need us, they nonetheless seem to love us.