Book excerpt: Once, there was a cat named Mouse. Vicki W. Fowler, DVM, met him when he was half-grown, on the day his owner brought him in to be destroyed because he was a dirty cat. Unable to convince the owner to pursue a less-lethal response, Dr. Fowler offered to find the cat a new home. But young Mouse had other plans. He quickly appointed himself the clinics mascotand Dr. Fowler his new human companion. For sixteen memorable years, Mouse made life more interesting for Dr. Fowler and her staff. She has owned (or been owned by) a long list of cats, but none more memorable than Mouse. In his honor, Dr. Fowler now shares some of her favorite stories from her nearly forty years in practice. As is the custom, names have been changed to protect the innocent, but the stories are all true. Dr. Fowler was the first woman veterinarian to own her own practice in New Yorks Capital District. She shares the tales of the many who touched her life, from her first cat in the early 1950s, through veterinary school in the 1960s, and her decades of private practice. Her memoirs celebrate the many people and animals who graced her life and who were there for her through the death of a child, a divorce, the raising of her children, deaths of pets, health problems, and retirement. They all shared in her joy and her sorrow, and she in theirs.