Well... my girlfriend and I have rescued MANY stray cats, in the alley, within our neighborhood.

Cats are without a doubt, utterly beautiful animals.

They have VERY COMPLEX emotions. When you look into their eyes and interact with them, you can tell they are sentient. They feel many emotions in a similar way to humans.

I also really like other animal species as well, such as dogs, chimpanzees, bonobos, parrots, crows, dolphins, whales, and the octopus (with the octopus likely being the smartest, and most neurologically complex non-mammal species on Earth).

Overall, I say there is NOTHING wrong with valuing and helping sentient, intelligent, and emotionally complex creatures in this universe.

Indeed, I believe it is a sign of a noble, and great soul, who recognizes the emotionally complexity of other species on this Earth, aside from just humans.

As the very wise Ghandi once famously said, you can judge a culture by the way it treats its animals.

HOWEVER...

Having said that, I feel it's important to mention that I would NEVER put the life of an animal, before the life of a human (unless the human was some kind of psychopathic, murdering idiot!).

Also having said that, I'm ashamed to admit that... yes... I eat meat!

I do realize that's HIGHLY hypocritical of me...

But once or twice per week, a nice juicy filet mignon steak, with a baked potato, and tall glass of red wine, just tastes AMAZING.

The rest of the time I eat vegetarian meals.

ALSO worth mentioning on this topic:

as someone who eats animal flesh (steak) once or twice per week, I will say this: I would pay A LOT more money for my weekly steak, if I could be assured that the animal who died for my sustenance was treated very well during the course of it's life, and lived a rather normal time span, and could walk around and graze freely in open space.