cat.

Living with Sherlock is like living with a human-size, halfway domesticated cat. There’s more walking on tables than you’d have preferred, bloody specimens left where you eat, but he does keep himself clean (most of the time) and provides intermittently pleasant company, when not busy playing with dead things or thinking himself too clever for human intimacy.

Still, the way I imagine cat owners survive the nature of their pets, you forgive him his unpredictability once curled up in your lap, because Sherlock possesses that altogether cattish ability -- to make one feel lucky to just be sat on by him.