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 love writing about my job because I loved it, and it was a particularly interesting one when I was a young man. It was like holidays with pay to me.

A farmer once told me one of the greatest luxuries of his life was to wake up early only to go back to sleep again.

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.

Over the years I knew her she always looked at me like that - as though I was a quite pleasant but amusing object - and it always did the same thing to me. It's difficult to put into words but perhaps I can best describe it by saying that if I had been a little dog I'd have gone leaping and gambolling around the room wagging my tail furiously.

I think it was the beginning of Mrs. Bond's unquestioning faith in me when she saw me quickly enveloping the cat till all you could see of him was a small black and white head protruding from an immovable cocoon of cloth. He and i were now facing each other, more or less eyeball to eyeball, and George couldn't do a thing about it. As i say, I rather pride myself on this little expertise, and even today my veterinary colleagues have been known to remark, "Old Herriot may be limited in many respects, but by God he can wrap a cat.

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.