In his 1844 Paris Manuscripts, Karl Marx famously defined humans as "creatures of need" or "needy creatures" who experienced suffering in the process of learning and working to meet their needs.

Jane lived somewhat like Laurie, happiest in the company of other Dog People, somehow rebuilding or reworking her own mangled life through the lives of sick, needy creatures.

But there are scads of other needy creatures around and worth having in the yard.

That way you could have adopted a needy creature and still preserved your amiable relationship with the semistray - a fine thing for you, her and her owners.

Unfortunately, the ark of our willingness isn't so huge as the assemblage of needy creatures that would board it.

Let us merely look at it; this world of constantly needy creatures who continue for a time merely by devouring one another, pass their existence in anxiety and want, and often endure terrible affliction, until they fall at last into the arms of death.

Can you imagine what he could do for really needy creatures?

But the Squirrelking could be stubborn, and he would not hear of Castle Floret's hospitality being denied to any needy creature.

Even the local cats were, without exception, well-fed and cared for, and there wasn't a needy creature for miles round.

Thom was always rescuing some needy creature or another- usually it was cats and dogs, but evidently now she'd felt this burglar needed saving.