Pet lovers know that animals sometimes understand us better than we do, and the annals of human sin and desire provide plenty of stories to drive the point home.

Snow’s line juxtaposes everyday experience (“pet lovers know…”) with a darker moral register (“the annals of human sin and desire”). The claim is less about literal animal cognition than about the way animals—through attention, loyalty, fear, or instinct—can mirror human motives and expose self-deception. By invoking “stories” from the record of human wrongdoing and longing, he suggests that narratives (myths, fables, anecdotes, literature) repeatedly use animals to illuminate what people refuse to admit about themselves. The effect is to elevate a familiar sentiment about pets into a broader reflection on moral psychology: animals can function as uncorrupted witnesses to human character.