‘Playing animal’ reflects back our yearnings and repulsions | Aeon Essays

The cat is responsive to success and failure in her pursuits, but whether the norms that govern her pursuits are valid—whether she ought to behave like a cat or a husky—is not at issue for her. For human beings, by contrast, the validity of norms is always implicitly and potentially explicitly at issue. We act in light of a normative understanding

their new (or different) intelligence was at the service of what they understood to be their essence: the canine. They were worthy of the fear ‘normal’ dogs showed them.