It could very well be a monkey. It just reminds me a little of some stylized fu dog representations I've seen, or maybe a funny looking shitsu. Eh. I don't care enough to go back and freeze frame it for closer inspection.

I would be squicked at any sexualized Kataang at their canon ages, but Aang's crush is awfully cute and I think I am reading Katara as younger than a lot of Zutara shippers apparently do -- her behavior in The Fortune Teller, for example, is incredibly immature -- so (at least for now) I am fine with seeing where the show wants to go with that.

I have been trying to find Zuko and Aang friendship fics on ff.net, but while there are a few awesome one-shots, mostly what I've found is horribly written shipfic... and a lot of sexualized shipfic at that. Oh, yick. Twelve years old! Twelve years old! Fourteen and twelve I can be okay with so long as it doesn't go past kissing. Sixteen and twelve is getting seriously skeevy even for kissing, let alone actual sex. *twitches*