Sweet stories of what we’ve learned from our animal friends.

People are complicated. Animals are simple. Within a few weeks of adopting my first dog last year, I realized that getting a pet brings the most predictable and guaranteed form of love there is.

You may notice that I edited out all of the names of the animals below. I learned this from David Sedaris when he talked about writing a book of fables. “I didn’t want any animal to have a name. … Sometimes someone will have a cat, and you ask, ‘What’s your cat’s name?’ And they say, ‘Critter!’ And you think, Oh, I hate your cat. And they say, ‘Diane.’ And you think, I like your cat.”

The thing is, you don’t need to know the names to know the stories. Just like you don’t need words to understand Critter.