Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.
There has always been a 'and this is where I come in' feeling about a night call. And as my lights swept the cobbles of the deserted market place it was there again, a sense of returning to fundamenta...
But cruel fate had not finished with us yet. My colleague’s gasps and grunts from the rear ceased for a moment to be replaced by a horrified shriek. The bloody thing’s shitting, Jim! She’s shitting ev...
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.
For years I used to bore my wife over lunch with stories about funny incidents.
That quotation about not having time to stand and stare has never applied to me. I seem to have spent a good part of my life - probably too much - in just standing and staring and I was at it again th...
A bullock, backing in alarm from the halter, crashed its craggy behind into my midriff. The wind shot out of me in a sharp hiccup, then the animal decided to turn round in the narrow passage, squashin...
And the peace which I always found in the silence and emptiness of the moors filled me utterly
Couldn’t be persuaded to part with him.
Without warning, the thermometer disappeared from my fingers. Some sudden suction had drawn it inside the cow. I ran my fingers round just inside the rectum—nothing; I pushed my hand inside without su...
Mind. So much for Herriot as a judge of character. I couldn’t have been more wrong, but Paul had fought his secret battle with a courage which had deceived everybody.
When all t'world goes one road, I go t'other.
He devoted a considerable amount of his acute intelligence to the cause of doing as little as possible.
Everybody was asleep. Everybody except me, James Herriot, creeping sore and exhausted towards another spell of hard labour. Why the hell had I ever decided to become a country vet? I must have been cr...
Every day lasts a year. I never enjoy anything. And every morning when I wake up I dread having to face the world again.
Parents are never sure that they have done the right thing. They can only do what they think is right.
If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.
Uncle was aghast. You don’t know him! Well you’re the only one as doesn’t. They think the world of him in Listondale, I can tell you. He lapsed into a shocked silence and applied a match to his pipe.
Life was full for me. There were so many things to find out and a lot I had to prove to myself. The days were quick and challenging and they pressed on me with their very newness. But it all stopped h...
He must have kicked the door open because it flew back viciously against the rubber stop and rebounded almost into his face.