Bear with it
There can't be many actors who didn't have to suffer the process of animal studies at drama school. Mine came in my first year. I remember thinking "what has this got to do with acting?". To which end I chose to be a snake who was asleep. It was soon pointed out to me by the rather excellent, if barking, movement teacher we had that snakes had no eyelids and slept with their eyes open, so my initial plan of slithering into a corner of the movement studio and catching 40 minutes kip was halted. The number of animals I have played in my career is exactly one, if we discount a short scene as the front end of the cow in "Dick Whittington" in York in the late 70s where the calibre of animal performers was rather higher than one might have thought. The cat was played by one Gary Oldman. I remember being rather jealous of the fact that he didn't have any lines to learn. He also got away without being involved in a rather energetic "milking" routin