the most impressed i am at a good actor? is when it’s a cat

i mean literally a cat. The one that comes first to mind is the protagonist’s white cat in The Fifth Element, but there’s a few others

they are so very very rare

a good dog actor? eh. dogs are made to be trained. probably easier to get them to follow stage directions than a human

a good human actor? eh. there are whole schools devoted to making those. just means some human had the money to go to one of those and/or the motivation and time to work really hard at it, which is the sort of thing humans naturally do

a good cat actor though?? that makes me wonder HOW did they manage it.

Someone bothered to get to KNOW that cat. And figure out what made that cat happy. and how to gently use those things to ease the cat into doing what the scene required, and doing it WELL

that’s a sign that someone, somewhere in the production of the movie, was INTENSELY good at their job

(probably multiple someones.)

(perhaps including the cat.)