Animal souls and/or spirits

First of all, lets not bicker about the definition of a "soul" or "spirit". For the layman, this does refer to the "meter reader" of the body functions, which is totally unnecessary for evolution or survival.

Usually referred to as "spirit", I speak of the "cognitive character experiencing the existence". The nihilist and annihilationist have zero explanations for this entity, because those religions are illogical and proven incorrect in a number of ways.

Now, as for the animal. We certainly get the notion that most animals, particularly mammals, do have "cognitive character experiencing the existence" magically trapped inside them.

We wonder, or most of us do, whether this is natural, whether animals in the wild have this, or whether they inherit this from us.

The notion that this "spirit entity" is divided from one big spirit entity, which is pretty much in most Christian teaching at least, suggests that the divided entity can combine later, after death, with the whole entity.

It's certainly true that during a human existence, the human can change his attitude, and despite the nihilist's flailing blind attempts to explain this biologically and psychologically, the nihilist and annihilationist each fail miserably, but each is deluded into believing otherwise, which in itself proves the existence of demonic forces, though the fools will rarely admit it.

It certainly seems that the cats and dogs, and even other mammals I've known, do have "meter readers". I wonder if I caused them to have these meter readers sometimes. I don't have a strong opinion either way, and want to keep an open mind.