I’ve often wondered how many people, like me, who come home to a wrecked couch or looted pantry or missing items and an animal pretending innocence with wide eyes staring up at me full of love while yawning as they awake from an afternoon nap, have wondered at what secret lives our pets have while we’re gone throughout the day. The nearly full theater I was in on a Sunday evening suggests many people.
Every dog has a little bit of a wild wolf in them, and every cat is (not so) secretly a murderer just waiting for their chance to kill. We project on them the qualities we want to see, like love and innocence, and while they do have attachments to us, they aren’t quite what we believe them to be. Because of this, and because we put more on our furry friends than may actually be there, it’s really not much of a stretch or surprise to us to see them existing in a community across species, going on adventures, and living double lives in a movie. The only real surprise about Secret Life of Pets is that it took this long before someone made it.