Brief periods of focused attention punctuated by long ones of reverie, this seems to be how dogs and cats spend their time, like you only with no lingering guilt about so indulging the 'default mode' - novel reading is a way to day dream while pretending to be purposeful. If dogs could read novels, they would. Birds on the other hand show little of this, when awake they are always alert, which makes them irascible, and from time to time ecstatic. A dog may be full of good humour, has social emotions, is perhaps only (nearly) ecstatic in an olfactory way, through disinterested inquiry. Cats can be supremely contented but never outright happy, they are perhaps more enslaved by sex, but don't show it, and don't appear to dream of it either. The nose covers all bases, put it before the mind.