Snowy is both an investigation into animal happiness and an intervention to improve one turtle’s life. We explore our capacity to understand the animals that live in our homes. Snowy’s story is a stand-in for the unexamined lives of our house pets—the goldfish, lizards, guinea pigs, and hermit crabs of our childhoods—the JV squad of house pets—the ones too small, short-lived and expressionless to garner much of our human attention.