R help - Apr 2010 - Counting number of values by row (text, not numbers)

Hi everyone!
I am very new to R and I am having some difficulties.
My data set looks something like this:

A                B                C                D               E
cat             monkey       cat             dog            cat
cat

Hi everyone!
I am very new to R and I am having some difficulties.
My data set looks something like this:

subject                A ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?B ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?C
? ?D ? ? ? ? ? ? ? E
       1                  cat ? ? ? ? ? ? monkey ? ? ? cat
dog ? ? ? ? ? ?cat
       2                  cat             cat               cat
     cat             dog
....

I want to create three new variables, that count the amount of "cat",
"monkey" and "dog" per subject

subject                A                B                C
   D               E            cat             dog             monkey
       1                  cat             monkey       cat
dog            cat          3               1                 1
       2                  cat             cat               cat
     cat             dog        4                1                 0
....

I have been looking at rowSums, rowsum, apply, grep, and doing some
searches, but I can only find count for numerical values or NA values.

Thanks in advance,

L