I'm thinking of having feelings. I care about many critter-like things which can't think abstractly, but do feel. But just having senses is not enough for me.

What you care about is not obviously the same thing as what is valuable to you. What's valuable is a confusing question that you shouldn't be confident in knowing a solution to. You may provisionally decide to follow some moral principles (for example in order to be able to exercise consequentialism more easily), but making a decision doesn't necessitate being anywhere close to being sure of its correctness. The best decision that you can make may still in your estimation be much worse than the best theoretically possible decision (here, I'm applying this observation to a decision to provisionally adopt certain moral principles).

To use a knowingly-inaccurate analogy: a layer of sensory/instinctual lizard brain isn't enough, a layer of thinking human brain is irrelevant, but a layer of feeling mammalian brain is just right?