Bonzo's War (13 page)

‘The Market was also a common dumping place for these castaways,' said the reporter. ‘After running about for days, collarless and uncared for, they were picked up by the police and others and taken to the home. Unless they took the fancy of people in search of a pet, the fate of these animals did not appear to be very promising.'

Cats fared no better. ‘Although not affected by the licensing, they were even more liable than dogs to find themselves without a home,' said Mr Slee. ‘It was invariably the young female cats which met with that treatment. It was just a case of not being wanted.'

‘The black-out had resulted in fewer pets straying from home,' thought Miss Amble of the West Country pet shelter. Just after war had been declared, she was kept busy destroying pets ‘for people who thought they would be
unable to obtain food for them,' it was explained. ‘Since then, however, business at the home has been quiet.' (Plymouth would be pounded by the
Luftwaffe
in spring 1941.)

Still no bombs had fallen. As
The Animals' Defender
, journal of the Animal Defence Society, noted at year end: ‘This curious war that never begins (except at sea) is at any rate affording time for ample preparations.' They meant NARPAC and its mission to see a blue-cross-badged collar at every pet's throat.

The Committee confessed in a New Year statement: ‘The aim of having an Animal Guard for every street is a long way yet from achievement. There has, however, been a good response to the Committee's appeal for the registration of animals. Completed forms are arriving daily in hundreds.' It had set up offices in Manchester and Birmingham – and was planning a grand move to take responsibility, not just for urban pets, but for all animals of ‘economic value'.

An extension of its activities nationwide would be a coup. The National Veterinary Medical Association (which was represented on the committee) pointed out that it was still completely unofficial. Would it not be better all round if it got recognition – with the crown device on its badge – just like the proper ARP?

Some people were getting jealous. ‘NARPAC Caught Napping?'
The Animals' Defender
asked in March. ‘Complaints are coming to us from so many independent sources that we cannot suppose they are all entirely baseless.' There were multiple complaints about no one at the HQ acknowledging offers to be Animal Guards and a lack of collars, according to the Animal Defence Society journal: ‘[It could] unhappily end in the whole scheme having to be scrapped for want of co-operation from a disgusted public.'

Louise Lind-af-Hageby complained that the celluloid discs were ‘highly inflammable and a danger not only to animals but human beings'. She got this reply: ‘A cat or dog lying in front of a fire must move long before the disk attached to it catches fire.'

The turmoil of evacuation (and by now a mass return to unbombed cities) and called-up dads still caused heartbreak. On 14 February the
Daily Mail
highlighted the plight of four-year-old Golden Retriever ‘Neil', who been evacuated to Aberdeen with Gillian, the young daughter of its owners, Captain and Mrs R. H. Donald. The dog, more used to the modern comforts of Dolphin Square in Pimlico and garrison life in Aldershot, had vanished from its temporary Scottish billet, apparently ‘looking for its master who is now serving in the British Expeditionary Force. Gillian is said to be fretting for Neil.'

Fathers in the services and mothers on war work meant a widespread concern on the part of canine worriers for a supposed large number of ‘lonely dogs'. Volunteer neighbours should at least offer to take them walkies.

Then there were happier tales. The Our Dumb Friends' League's Paddington Shelter reported ‘five white ferrets brought to the shelter because the owner was leaving for the Army and felt they would not be happy with anyone else'. And a number of Angora rabbits were rescued after delayed action bombs had been exploded or made safe.

In March 1940,
PDSA News
told the story of the Revd M. Duke, who had left the living of Saint Mary's, Doncaster, for Emmanuel, a church in Paddington in west London. ‘His cat, Whiskers, who had accompanied him to London turned up in Doncaster ten weeks later, where it had left a number of kittens,' said the report. ‘The only explanation I can think of,' said the vicar, ‘is that cats have some power of distant communication.'

There were plenty more stories about evacuated cats with amazing homing instincts, including a ten-year-old tabby who voyaged from Saffron Walden to Surrey, another who got from Devon to Surbiton, and yet another who travelled from London to Brighton guided by some impossible feline instinct.

‘Peter', a three-and-a-half-year-old Siamese, belonging to Mr and Mrs Jenkins of Surbiton, walked home from Devonshire, a distance of 187 miles. It took him three months, ‘but he arrived safely on the front-door steps of his home'.

‘Rota', a pet lion from a circus ‘won in a bet' as a cub by its owner, Mr George Thompson, managing director of Rotaprint, lived in a substantial cage in the garden of 49 Cuckoo Hill Road, Pinner, in suburban north London. Neighbours complained about the roaring. ARP Wardens demanded to be armed. Rota ate 50 lb of horseflesh a week. On 31 May he went to the London Zoo. His adventures were just beginning.

A posh cat had a narrow escape via human intervention. In spring 1940 in as yet unbombed London, two office girls in their lunch hour found ‘a frightened tabby' wandering in Curzon Street, Mayfair. They took it to a shop in nearby Lansdowne Row run by a Miss Marjorie Ashton, who had an ‘Animal Guard' sign prominently displayed in the window.

Other than being in obvious immediate distress, the tabby was evidently well cared for. It was fortuitously wearing a NARPAC blue-cross-red-circle disc on its collar inscribed with a reference number – which, after some urgent telephoning, quickly divulged an address not too far away in fashionable Eaton Place, Belgravia.

The fortunate tabby seemed all set to be reunited with its upstairs owner but at the tradesman's entrance of No. 47,
the downstairs housekeeper refused to acknowledge it. The family cat, she insisted, had already been ‘despatched in a hamper' by railway van to its mistress, Lady Juliet Rhys Williams. She was the daughter of the romantic novelist Elinor Glyn and the wife of a prominent Liberal politician, herself an ardent social reformer. Once described as the ‘cleverest woman in England', Lady Juliet was not clever enough to hang on to her cat.

Lady Juliet was apparently taking refuge at the family estate at Miskin Manor, Glamorganshire. The distressed tabby must have somehow escaped from the ‘hamper' between Belgravia and Paddington station. It was on its way to Wales in a more robust container the next day.

The wider war was not entirely forgotten. In March 1940, the fate of the gallant Finns, having resisted the Soviets for five months, grabbed the attention of British animal lovers.

The RPSCA had sent the intrepid Lt-Col Gartside to the Baltic and opened a fund for the animals of ‘tragic and unspeakably heroic Finland as they faced the shells, bombs and bullets of the cruel Soviet masses'. Nothing was worse than mistreating animals. Russian horses captured by the Finns, it was reported, ‘showed signs that their normal rations were anything but satisfactory'. There were tales of the Russians training dogs as canine mines to blow up Finnish tanks.

Madame de Gripenberg, wife of the Finnish minister in London, appealed on behalf of ‘the faithful little Finnish Spitz dogs, so clever as messenger carriers and in their ability to find their masters in the snow, the small horses, sturdy, swift and intelligent, the reindeer used to draw sleighs of wounded men.

‘We hope and believe that even in this period of financial stringency there will be many who will find it in
their hearts to help the RSPCA to help the animals in Finland.' By the time these words appeared in print, the exhausted Finns had already sued for peace. There would be plenty more of Europe's animals to succour in this war.
¹¹

Concern for animals began at home. The Government was shaping up for a long siege. That spring 5,000 civil servants of the Ministry of Food were decanted to the faded Edwardian seaside resort of Colwyn Bay in north Wales, to fight the good fight with memo and rubber stamp from requisitioned hotels and boarding houses. The Meadowcroft Hotel on Llannerch Road was to be the headquarters of the Animal Feeding Stuffs Division. It would function,
de facto
, as the Ministry of Pets.

Meat was declared rationed on 11 March 1940. It was done by price rather than weight, to the value of 1
s
. 10
d
. per person per week. Cheap cuts became premium cuts. For carnivores, it was to be a tough time. Sausages, of dwindling meat content, were not rationed and nor was offal (liver, kidneys, tripe, oxtail, kidney, heart etc.) but that did not mean you could get it.

Tinned pet food such as Chappie and Kit-e-Kat were not restricted (yet).
The Cat
urged the vegetarians among their readers to donate their physical meat ration to cats' shelters.

Advice crowded in from all sides on the feeding of pets, from newspapers, from welfare groups, from
manufacturers. NARPAC had issued a booklet,
Wartime Aids for Animal Owners
, which stressed a balanced diet for cats and dogs, containing its proper quota of ‘energy-giving', ‘body building' and ‘protective' foods. A large Pekingese weighing 10 lb needed 5–6 oz of carbohydrates, 1 oz of protein and a ¼ oz of fat at each meal, while for a 25 lb Scots Terrier and a 60 lb Airedale the amounts had to be proportionate.

‘This country has not reached a stage when the wholesale destruction of household pets is necessary,' counselled the RSPCA. Its handy leaflet
Feeding Dogs and Cats in Wartime
advised, ‘Potatoes are plentiful and if you put in extra tubers when digging for victory you will not have it on your conscience that shipping space is being taken for food for your animals.' Starchy potatoes could be made palatable with gravy concocted from bones. Perhaps.

Other suggested canine diets consisted of stale bread and oatmeal, ‘made into thick porridge' and mixed with meat scraps from the table, or stale bread mixed with ‘chopped cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, turnip, carrot or other green leaves' moistened with ‘soup or gravy made from bones or scraps'. Gravy from to-be-human-consumed stewing meat could be offered to pets, ‘a sacrifice that every owner would be prepared to make'.

Proprietary foods, ‘Red Heart, Kit-e-Kat, Ken-L Ration, Chappie etc.' were available in glass bottles, said the Society, although being a charity, it could not make recommendations.

Cats, the Society advised, ‘will usually eat the food recommended in the above diets, provided there is included some meat gravy, sardine oil, or oil liquids made
from fish trimmings. The Ministry of Food will not permit the use of Cod Liver Oil as food for household pets.'
¹²

The pacifist Louise Lind-af-Hageby meanwhile could find comfort in how the war had inspired ‘the majestic rise of the vegetarian life, once supposed to be chosen by sentimentalist weaklings and the gastronomically foolish. The potato and the carrot have assumed enormous importance.'

Too much so for some … The Cabinet Food Policy Committee decided at the beginning of May that impending shortage was going to mean reductions of foodstuff all round for ‘non-essential' livestock. Horse racing should be reduced and greyhounds limited to one meeting per week per track as a statement of intent, if nothing else. Hunts would be rationed to one sixth of the pre-war level of feed for hounds (including beagles) and one tenth for hunters.

Pig and poultry keepers were already getting one sixth of pre-war levels. Game and silver fox farms were strictly rationed. Zoos were severely curtailed – one third of pre-war consumption for London Zoo, one fifth and later one tenth for private zoos of pre-war levels. The hunt for horseflesh for the carnivores was constant. Getting fish was ‘very difficult'. Two ‘big hungry sea lions' were shipped to America. Carrots for fruit eaters were grown at Whipsnade. An adoption scheme was launched, initially for ZSL Fellows, rapidly expanded to anyone who wanted to send money for food – typically hard-to-get but unrationed fruit.

‘Adolf' the aardvark (thus named as a baby in 1936) was one of the first to be adopted. He was renamed ‘Charlie' but people seemed to prefer his earlier incarnation. Dorothy L. Sayers, the animal-loving crime writer, adopted a porcupine.
¹³

Wheat for dog biscuits was reduced by two thirds of pre-war amounts. The ‘Milled Wheaten Substance (Restriction) Order' made on 2 May, biscuit-loving dogdom's bane, forbade the use of such products for anything but human food without special licence.

The National Milk Scheme would be launched on 1 July, to provide expectant and nursing mothers and children under five with daily milk at a fixed price of 2
d
. a pint, or, if necessary, free. Otherwise for adults it was two pints a week. There was nothing spare for pets.

Hungry humans knew who it was to blame. Anti-pet whispering became a clamour. Grumpy farmers were already advocating the destruction of domestic pets – while their own working dogs were exempt from licence. Tail-Waggers advised that there were ‘dreadful people' abroad leaving lumps of poisoned bread in the streets and advised dog lovers to carry a lump of washing soda in their pockets ready to push down a poisoned dog's throat.

How to reduce dog numbers was becoming a direct concern of the Government. Raising the cost of the dog licence was considered in Whitehall in May. But it was noted by HM Customs and Excise for the Minister that this ‘would fall on the lower classes' who fed scraps to their
pets. ‘It is the pampered and well-fed dogs of the better-off classes that make inroads into feeding stuffs that might be better used,' he was told. How true that was. There was trouble ahead.