If a farmer calls me to a sick animal, he couldn't care less if I were George Bernard Shaw.

There was no last animal I treated. When young farm lads started to help me over the gate into a field or a pigpen, to make sure the old fellow wouldn't fall, I started to consider retiring.

I hope to make people realize how totally helpless animals are, how dependent on us, trusting as a child must that we will be kind and take care of their needs.

I have felt cats rubbing their faces against mine and touching my cheek with claws carefully sheathed. These things, to me, are expressions of love.

I think it was the fact that I liked it so much that made the writing just come out of me automatically.

What we've been through the last four years makes me sick. Everybody around here calls me 'Grumpy,' and I've become that way as a direct result of our record since I've been here.