"A few years back all the animals went away.
We woke up one morning, and they just weren't there anymore. They didn't even leave us a note, or say good-bye. We never figured out quite where they'd gone.
We missed them.
Some of us thought the world had ended, but it hadn't. There just weren't any more animals. No cats or rabbits, no dogs or whales, no fish in the seas, no birds in the skies.
We were all alone.
We didn't know what to do.
We wandered around lost, for a time, and then someone pointed out that just because we didn't have animals anymore, that was no reason to change our lives. No reason to change our diets or to cease testing products that might cause us harm.
After all, there were still babies. . . ."
-Excerpt from Neil Gaiman's "Babycakes", Smoke and Mirrors
I'm so glad he says that this is the only story he's written that disturbs him. Otherwise, I might have to hate him, and that would be an awful thing.