If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.
If a farmer calls me to a sick animal, he couldn't care less if I were George Bernard Shaw.
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 became a connoisseur of that nasty thud a manuscript makes when it comes through the letter box.
I am never at my best in the early morning, especially a cold morning in the Yorkshire spring with a piercing March wind sweeping down from the fells, finding its way inside my clothing, nipping at my nose and ears.
For years I used to bore my wife over lunch with stories about funny incidents.
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 could do terrible things to people who dump unwanted animals by the roadside.
