Hi Paul and welcome 

I don't know how to answer your questions in a way that explains or proves anything, but only from my own experience and beliefs.  I do believe animals have a consciousness, but I don't believe they are a different form of consciousness.  The way I understand and believe is that we are all conscious beings exploring consciousness.  Whether we are here in the physical, alive, or we're somewhere nonphysical or dead, we continue to be conscious beings.  And we always have the ability and right to focus our awareness anywhere or any level of consciousness we choose.  For instance, here on this physical daily-life level I'm trying to learn how to "raise my conscious focus" to a higher level than I'm normally operating in from day to day.  It happens spontaneously, this "higher level of consciousness" and in it is where I receive a lot of my psychic "downloads" I like to call them.  I like labels only because it helps me learn and remember and recognize what I'm experiencing while I'm experiencing it, but I believe we all have the same capability.   

I have had several pets whom I've had psychic experiences with.  Although they are "just animals" I find it hard to believe that they are not as worthy, capable, or curious as we humans are.  One of my cats visited here in the physical on a daily basis after his death.  My other cat only visited in dreams.  That same cat, while alive, also once sent me a clairvoyant vision that he was seeing a huge spider on the wall behind me.  One of my dogs showed me clairvoyantly his dish was empty.  The reason I feel these clairvoyant visions were not just my own psychic ability reading their thoughts is because the visions were from the visual vantage point of the animal at the time I received them and I wasn't trying to do any psychic reading or receiving at the time.  They were spontaneous events as the animal came to me.  So it's my belief that they are capable of communicating in other forms well beyond our physical world means. 

There are so many stories out there of pets saving lives, or knowing when someone is about to die, able to detect illness or warn of danger.  How do these animals know these kinds of things?  What's even more amazing is their ability to communicate it to us.  It's like the big question is, what makes them care or think that we need to know?  How do they understand that level of compassion?     I always believed my favorite cat, my Main Coon named Tristan, was just as human as I am.  He only seemed like a cat because of his physical form, but I know that we shared a spiritual connection much deeper than him just being a pet to me. 

Vicky

In the book 'A View into the Hereafter' they told a few things about animals in heaven.

Here is a link to the online version. You have to read this online chapter a bit through to come to the part about animals.

Here is another link to the online pdf file. It directs you to the part in the chapter where they start talking about animals in the afterlife. You can save this file to your computer to read it offline.

Here is another link to the pdf versions of the other parts of the book.

I have wondered this as I've lost a good number of pest over the years. I lost the last of my original cats on the day after Thanksgiving. It's now down to one slightly younger cat and a dog. I might have to check out those links later as I have found myself sometimes wondering about the whereabouts of my deceased pets and if I might see them in F27 or if they will keep reincarnating as larger and larger beings until they become humans.