You can tell that the poet misses his pet, misses this unique relationship in his life that—itself like a star—helped orient him on certain too-quiet nights when he was lost at sea. It is a marvelous demonstration of how to write about animals: by using specific memories, and not anthropomorphizing them to such a degree that they lose their essential dogginess or catness or mongooseness, but, instead, by recognizing their striking, sometimes sublime differences from us, alongside their similarities. ​ Sometimes, it is enough, as Neruda understood, to have someone look at us to remind us we exist, and that someone, or something, cares that we do. ​ listening with drooping eyes and the occasional blustery sneeze.) He was wonderfully just-there, an uncritical receptacle for my childhood loneliness.