‘What’s your call about?’ said the switchboard operator at the Department for the Environment.
‘You don’t need to know that. Just please put me through. They’re expecting me.’
‘But I have to say what your call is about.’
‘Well, my call is about having just spoken to the minister and him not having time to talk to me and telling me to call his office so I can raise some important concerns with his people.’
‘What people?’
‘Well, I don’t know, do I? The people in his office. Look, just put me through.’
‘But I can’t put you through unless you tell me what it’s about.’
‘You have to put me through because I just spoke to the minister and he said to ring his office. I can ring Jim back and tell him you won’t put me through, if you like?’
‘Oh-wuw,’ she said like a petulant child. ‘Hold the line, then. I’ll have to…(tut…sigh…),’ and after a short time the line began ringing again.
‘Hello, can I ask what you’re calling about?’ said a different voice, equally suspicious.
‘Look, I just spoke to the minister and he’s very busy — there’s an election on, I believe — and I have some concerns about animal welfare and he said to call his office, so here I am.’
‘He said what?’
‘To call you.’
‘Why? What’s this about?’
And then it struck me. When the minister for animal welfare tells someone like me to call his office, what he means is ‘bugger off with your stupid questions about rabbits, you daft woman’. And to be honest, if I were him, I would probably do the same.
Trouble is, how am I ever going to get cross-party support for a new Bill to give protection to caged animals if I can’t speak to the Department of the Environment constructively about it? Naturally, as I’m a political journalist, and we’re six weeks from a general election, every time I ring they just think I’m trying to do something horrible to them.
And to be fair to Defra, I don’t think I’ve ever called them before unless it’s to accuse them of being incompetent — usually about muck heaps or horse passports. Either that or I’m berating them for banning hunting. All right, I admit it, I was never going to be taken seriously when I rang to say I wanted to help the bunny wabbits.
When I was finally fobbed off on to a press officer who would talk to me, he was entirely focused on defusing explosive journalistic devices. ‘When you say you want to find out if there are any codes of welfare covering rabbits, what do you mean?’
‘That,’ I said.
‘When you say you’re concerned there’s a loophole in the law that means there are living standards set out for dogs, cats and primates but not for rabbits, what do you mean?’
‘That,’ I said.
You could almost hear his brain screaming, ‘But you’re on record as supporting fox hunting! Malfunction, malfunction!’
That’s right, I wanted to explain. You can support the position of man at the top of the food chain and still find it repulsive that pets are kept for years in small boxes. You can justify a blood sport on the basis that the fox has a good life in the wild before you kill it and still not want to be complicit in the torture of live creatures by placing them in cages.
I don’t find that a contradiction. If it were left to me, all animals would live a life as close to nature as possible and our part in it would be limited to either riding or eating them, or else making up our minds that if we must keep them in the house to give them as luxurious a life as possible and enjoy their excellent company. I do a bit of both myself. But for some reason Labour seem fixated on a truly weird combination of stopping a dog chasing a fox across a field, but being perfectly happy with halal butchery and imprisoning animals as a ‘pass time’. Bizarre.
I suppose you can guess why all this started. I went to the rabbit-rescue centre the other day. It was harrowing. I brought back an affectionate little fluffball called Tinkerbell as a companion for TT. And now, as the pair of them snuggle on the rug together, I lie in bed thinking about the ones I left behind. I don’t know which were sadder: the ones staring mournfully out of their boxes or the ones jumping excitedly up and down.
Clearly, I have only two choices: take 50 of them home and let them roam around my garden, or embarrass myself some more on government switchboards. I must decide.
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