The animals really are taking over our world – my beloved pooch now tries to drag ME to the pub

AS A fellow scribbler remarked elsewhere this week, wild animals seem to possess ‘some atavistic sixth sense that humans are in disarray or on the retreat’. His theory is certainly borne out by my own observations of the behaviour of the local fauna in our South London suburb.

For many years now, we’ve been plagued by foxes, tipping up bins as they scavenge for food or leaping from garden to garden in search of ill- secured rabbit hutches. But before the lockdown, they had a furtive air about them, constantly peering over their shoulders like burglars expecting to have their collars felt at any moment.

These days, they swagger around as if they own place, sunning themselves on our lawn or inviting their friends and relations round for fun and playful boxing matches on my property.

Feasting

Rats and mice, too. Until this wretched coronavirus brought the world to a halt, they kept their heads down, hardly ever putting in a public appearance in our area (though I’m well aware of the urban myth that you’re never more than six feet away from a rat in the capital).

Look out of my kitchen window today, however, and you’ll often see a mouse strolling across the patio, or a massive brown rat feasting on the sunflower hearts spilled on to the grass beneath the birdfeeder by thieving squirrels.

In some parts of the country, this sudden appearance of unusually large numbers of vermin may be explained by disruptions in bin collections, at a time when huge quantities of surplus food are being thrown out by panic buyers whose eyes were too big for their bellies at the start of the lockdown.

But not in my neck of the woods, where the rubbish has been collected as usual (a massive thank you, by the way, to the binmen of Lambeth, supermarket and corner-shop workers, delivery drivers and all the others who are doing their damnedest to preserve some semblance of normality during this madness).

The only plausible explanation is indeed that wild animals somehow sense that the world is theirs, for the moment, and that humankind has drawn back from the fray. I guess it must have something to do with the eerie silence in our cities and the intoxicating purity of the air.

Where domestic pets are concerned, however, I’m not so sure. All I can say with any certainty is the new light of my life, our rescue dog Minnie, seems well aware something mighty strange is going on.

All right, I realise it’s probably foolish to attribute human thoughts and feelings to animals. Indeed, I vividly remember cringing with embarrassment in my youth when my late father — normally the least sentimental of men — wrote and had published in the Times a twee letter, which he signed with the name of the family’s Siamese cat, Mimosa. If anyone at my school had found out, it would have meant social death.

But there’s something about the way Minnie looks at me in the morning, cocking her head in apparent puzzlement, that convinces me she’s thinking: ‘What the hell is happening?

‘Why’s it so quiet? Why are both my owners permanently at home, instead of just the old codger who takes me for walks while Mrs U is at work? Why no more lovely drives in the car to the wide open spaces, for long afternoons in Richmond Park or the countryside?’

Most bewildering of all, why do we now walk past the pub — where Minnie is something of a celebrity, with a flourishing fan club among the bar staff and my fellow regulars who lavish her with treats — without going in? She’s taken to scrabbling at the locked door as we go by, before looking up at me and tilting her head, as if to demand: ‘Please explain.’

I’d like to tell her that if she thinks it’s bad for her, she should consider what it’s like for us human beings. She, at least, has no job to lose, no pension pot being whittled away to nothing, no constant fear of a horrible death, cut off from loved ones who may too succumb to Covid-19.

Energetic

What’s more, until the other day this most gregarious, boundlessly energetic and affectionate of creatures has been able to socialise in the park to her heart’s content, chasing her ball for miles and bounding up to men, women, children and other dogs with her usual enthusiasm. Meanwhile, we poor members of the blighted species homo sapiens have to keep a wary distance.

But now, it seems, even this may be about to change, as the experts turn their attention to the supposed dangers posed by pets.

It’s worst of all for cat owners, who were told this week by the British Veterinary Association that they should keep their pets locked up indoors for the duration of the crisis. Or at least that’s what the BVA appeared to say, until tear- stricken inquiries from the nation’s ten million cat lovers caused its website to crash.

Backtracking frantically, the association’s president, Daniella dos Santos, said that only those owners showing symptoms of Covid-19 should keep their pets indoors — and even then, they should let them out if confinement interfered with the animals’ mental health. You don’t have to be an epidemiologist to realise the BVA doesn’t know what it’s talking about (but then who does, where this virus is concerned?) For one thing, the theory that felines can be infected appears to rest on the ridiculously flimsy evidence that one cat in Belgium and one tiger in the Bronx Zoo in New York have tested a mild positive for Covid-19.

Otherwise, a bizarre experiment in China — in which a grand total of five cats were subjected to massive doses of the coronavirus — found it was possible for one cat to pass it on to another. But as far as I’m aware (and the World Health Organisation seems to agree) there is no evidence at all that cats can infect humans.

Of course, it is possible the WHO is wrong, as it often is. But if so, where’s the sense in locking up only those few thousand cats whose owners show symptoms — particularly since we’re told by our ruling experts some 20 per cent of human carriers show no symptoms at all?

And why worry about cats’ mental health, if we’re really supposed to believe that those allowed outdoors put human lives in danger? For what it’s worth — which I freely admit is practically nothing — I bet they don’t.

Infected

But the clueless experts haven’t finished. They also tell us (again, without a shred of convincing evidence) that it’s important to minimise contact with dogs, which may carry the virus in their fur if they’ve been stroked by people with the infection.

Meanwhile, the Scottish government has decreed dogs in households which may possibly be infected with the virus should be kept on a lead at all times.

Well, as far as I’m aware, I haven’t contracted Covid-19 just yet. But the very last thing I want to do, no matter how small the risk, is to put any fellow human being in danger. And since the only way to stop Minnie from socialising with other dogs and families is to keep her on a tight lead at all times, that’s just what I’ve been doing. She hates it, and so do I.

The upshot is that to burn off her surplus energy, I now spend half my life chucking a tennis ball for her to retrieve from the bottom of our garden, 60ft away. Even after the 50th time in a row, she never gets bored with the game. I do.

But then lockdown has been a salutary lesson in self-knowledge. After a month confined to home, apart from one hour a day, I now realise I will never write that Booker Prize-winning novel, never master a musical instrument or get round to reading Proust. After strong consumer resistance from Mrs U, I’ve even given up on my least demanding project — growing a beard.

The only thing I seem to be good for is chucking a tennis ball the length of my garden, for the amusement of an inexhaustible quadruped. With that, I wish my readers as happy an Easter as possible — and happier ones to come.