We've had several cats. I had a cat when I was a kid. My Aunt had lots of cats and I got lots of calls about cats.

I am also a believer in an integrated treatment approach to autism.

I studied a lot of animal behavior and one of the things I find really interesting is the whole idea that animals are sensory based thinkers and I wrote about this in my book, Animals in Translation. That an animal's memory is not in words, they've got to be in pictures - it's very detailed so let's say the animal gets afraid of something - they'll get afraid of something that they're looking at or hearing, the moment the bad thing happens.

When I was younger I was looking for this magic meaning of life. It's very simple now. Making the lives of others better, doing something of lasting value. That's the meaning of life, it's that simple.

How do you have a think in pictures? Well, you have to sort the pictures into categories. You know, for example, a dog knows that, you know, there's good people and there's bad people. And I talked to a lady the other day where her dog was afraid of people with white beards because she had adopted him from an animal shelter and somebody with a white beard had abused him. And this dog was now afraid of everybody that had a white beard. That was the bad category.

Us visual thinkers like me, be good at things like industrial design, graphics, art, those kind of jobs.

People on the autism spectrum don't think the same way you do. In my life, people who made a difference were those who didn't see labels, who believed in building on what was there. These were people who didn't try to drag me into their world, but came into mine instead.