I heard a caller on C2C before talking about a strange connection with dogs and wolves, he said that wolves in the wild would just come up to him and
let him pet them.
I think he even said he went and lived in the wild for some time and just felt a deep connection to these animals.
I don't know how much to believe of what he said but it sounds a lot like what you are saying OP but possibly on a lesser scale.
I myself am an animal lover I grew up in a home that always had at least 5 dogs and 3 cats, also two pot bellie pigs quite a few hamsters and an
iguana.
I now have 4 dogs and some cats I wont name how many because I do not want to be judged haha but yes I can probably take the part of the 23 year old
crazy cat lady.
Anyway my three cats that I raised that are just mine and not my mothers I am deeply connected to I raised them by hand they were about a week old
when their mother abandoned them on my front step.
So I am very very close to these cats they are my heart actually and they are very emotionally intelligent they know when I am sad they comfort me
when I cry, when I come into the room they jump onto my lap and give me a kiss when I sleep they are always sleeping right on top of me, they are very
jealous little beings and do not like someone sharing my bed with me or anything being in my lap like my computer or a book and they will chew or just
simply lay right on top of it to get my attention away from it.
This is a strange little story and I know will sound crazy haha
anyway like I've said before I have health problems about a year ago I had to
get something called a full thickness muscle flap done to my foot, and while my foot was hurt for some reason they always insisted on sleeping on my
foot but once it was healed they went back to their normal ways, then a few months ago my one cat kept laying on my head , he'd jump up while I was
laying there and literally would lay on the top of my head I'd push him off he'd come right back and it was really annoying because at the time I
had been experincing bad headaches and eye pain/cranial pain so my sympthoms began to increase and I found out there's a malformation in my brain,
then recently I read a story about a man who had a brain tumor or something along those lines and when he got it his cat had began sleeping on his
head.
It's probably just a coincidence but possibly they are deeply more connected to their senses then we could ever imagine animals and some humans CAN
smell cancer so possibly they can sense other illness as well and maybe instead of sensing emotion in an intelligent way maybe they sense it literally
with their sense of sight,smell, taste and if this is so maybe some people have a smell or something about them that is more appealing or less
threatening to animals?
I am grasping at straws, I know but I feel animals do not get the credit, respect and love they fully deserve.