It’s also the fact that the more fundamental something is and the more familiar we are with it, the less you can fuck with it.

I can accept that a cat is able to talk since they’re mostly physically capable of making the sounds and there are obviously other animals capable of talking (birds, and uh, humans), but you’re not going to get away with a normal guy just inexplicably not needing to breathe because you forgot about that when writing the script.