I don't see any reason to doubt that your cat is doing some simple planning ahead in regards to the mouse, Steve. I had a dog who did the same kind of thing in regards to specific squirrels and chimpmunks on our property whom he wanted to catch, and he was quite clever about it. He did catch a number of them by lying in ambush at prearranged places (such as right around the corner of the house) and he was willing to lie in wait for an hour or two to do it.

I think we and the animals are, as you say, on a continuous spectrum or a sliding scale in that sense. I wasn't attempting to suggest that we are not animals. We are very complex animals. The Indians, for example, regarded the animals as their relatives, but they did say that human beings bore a mental and spiritual burden that animals do not, having "forgotten" the universal harmony, and that a human being spends his life trying to remember what an animal already knows, but doesn't spend any time worrying about. To say that can indicate a complete dichotomy...or it can just indicate being at a different point on the spectrum.

I have noticed that pets can pick up a lot of mental problems and hangups from their relationship with their owners...so some of our complexities can get transferred to a receptive animal.

If souls exist....then I am pretty sure that every living thing would have a soul, not just humans. If an afterlife exists, then I think every living thing would have an afterlife, not just humans.

The egotism of a race often results in them imagining a deity that is like themselves (only bigger and better)...so if rabbits were to imagine a deity, I bet they'd think it was like a rabbit, thus seeing themselves being made "in God's image". ;-) I prefer the viewpoint of the North American Indians who imagined some kind of omnipresent Spirit that couldn't be described in bodily terms. That's the way most of the Asians see it also...once they move beyond the simpler metaphors (like the many Hindu gods and goddesses). While simple people in India might actually believe literally in those gods and goddesses, more advanced students of spiritual matters in that tradition realize that those are just metaphors for various aspects of existence. They are archetypes, not depictions of supposedly literal being. To put it another way, they are symbols of various primary thought-forms.