Our brains are hardwired to look for minds and assign intentionality wherever responsiveness is detected—even a dog tilting its head or waiting by the door triggers our social processing machinery.

So our dogs are already talking to us. And her cats as well. I know some of us have conversations with our dog and our cat and we simulate the responses they give back to us.

We would like to think they would start talking to us about a novel about dogs, or the classical music playing in the background.

One would think Luna would be talking to me about why the cats are allowed on the sofa, and she cannot. That’s not how animals work . That’s how short sided human nature works.

In general Luna would not talk very much. Because her first sentence would have something to do with squirrels. She would get frustrated because it is a hard word to pronounce.

And go back to chasing her tail.