All of my pet cats and dogs have been rescue animals for many years. I am firmly convinced that the average intelligence of cats and dogs is vastly higher than that of humans. Not that I rate the animals so highly, just place humans so low! I much prefer to spend time with animals rather than people. The animals treat me much better. They just want to do their thing and be left alone, the same as me.
Here is a quote from Henry Beston:
"We need a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals...
We Patronize them for incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves.
And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete,
gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings;
they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth."
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"A man needs a little madness...or else...he never dares cut the rope and be free."
Nikos Kazantzakis, ZORBA THE GREEK
Some of us just have a little more madness than others!