Top of my ambitions for this year: be less nice. Do fewer good turns. Be less amenable and most of all a lot less kind to animals. While this sounds a bit grim, you have to consider that I am starting from a very high base. If I go out of my way to be heartless every time a stray needs rescuing, I reckon the most I can hope for is that I won’t end up with every single one of them in my house. Just 50 per cent of them. Frankly, I would settle for that.
Because I must not continue the year as I have started. With another rabbit in my kitchen. How this happened I have absolutely no idea. Why, when asked the perfectly preposterous question, ‘Would you like a rabbit?’, do I always end up saying, ‘Yes, of course, bring it straight round,’ when what I mean to say is, ‘No, no no! I’m fuller than Noah’s Ark on a wet weekend in Ararat.’
Now I’m down £80 for another deluxe indoor rabbit cage, £54 for vaccinations, £68 neutering. But I can’t help it. I’m one of those people who doesn’t choose animals, they choose me. This sounds a cute, cosy sort of concept but it isn’t. It’s chilling. Needy creatures seek me out with pinpoint accuracy.
Take last summer, for example. My boyfriend and I repaired to an idyllic house in the hills of Haute-Provence. I’d been sitting by the pool in my bikini reading Cherie Blair’s autobiography for only half an hour when he came out to find me surrounded by chickens. And a huge pregnant Doberman and three cats, one of them a tiny, rake-thin thing with mangy fur and a broken jaw. They had come from far and wide as word got round that the daft woman who’ll do anything for animals was in town. In minutes I had transformed a chic, Provençal hideaway into a complete dump. The gentle hum of crickets had given way to the raucous clucking of hens laying eggs under designer sunloungers and feral cats mewing their desperate petitions for food and shelter while lapping water out of the pool.
By the end of the two weeks I had expanded my brood to five cats, seven chickens and two dogs, all the while making it worse for myself by doing exactly what they asked.
I had taken the raggedy thin cat to the vets to have it wormed and to see if anything could be done about its wonky jaw. It could not, and so I proceeded to feed it up on tins of tuna and goose-based delicacies — well, foie gras is mushy, you see…
As the time of our departure approached, I walked round the village knocking on doors trying to find someone to continue this feeding programme. Strangely, there were no takers. So I went on the internet to Google Eurotunnel regulations to see whether I could bring Lilly, the wonkiest kitten in the West, back with me in the boyfriend’s Porsche. I measured her up for a tote bag with a view to stowing her at my feet. (He didn’t argue. He’s learnt not to.)
In the end I had to leave them all. They came out into the driveway to say their goodbyes as we drove off. Lilly sat staring at me with her lower jaw sticking jauntily out to the side in what looked to me, poor anthropomorphic fool that I am, like a smile.
Just as well that I managed not to put them all in the 911, as I already have a house full of rescued animals, including a giant rabbit the size of a dog who pretty much runs the joint. And then there are the horses who are boarding at my expense in a pricey corner of Surrey. They’re waifs, too.
I had intended to buy something I could ride but then word reached me of a mad chestnut mare who had worn everyone’s patience to shreds. She flashed the whites of her eyes and that was it. Sold! To the woman with an essential part of her brain missing. I was happily getting on with being thrown off that horse when the next equine foundling came along: a mare who turned round and aimed both back hooves at me whenever I went into her stable. Another coup de foudre. For the first few weeks I couldn’t even get a bridle over her head because she wouldn’t let me touch her ears. But one day, after stroking her face for ages, she put her head down and let me put it on. Then she nuzzled me.
Now I’m getting the same warm feeling as I watch my new £202 bunny nibbling treats. Daft, isn’t it?
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
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