life during wartime

From the great American food writer, M.F.K. Fisher, and a chapter in her 1942 book How To Cook A Wolf:

There is one eccentric and wealthy old lady in Cornwall, the kind who is
often the victim in mystery stories, who was stoned in 1940 because she had
refused to kill her cat and her terrier. Moreover, she had turned her cellars
and her air-raid shelter into a haven for every pet she could rescue from the
panicky village. That seemed terrible to the people, to feed and protect
brute-beasts while little children were bombed and might be hungry too.
The old lady was most unpopular, in 1940.

But in 1941 she was not. By then the rats and mice were scampering
prolifically and plumply through many another village than hers, and contrary to
centuries of habit, people beamed instead of groaned when they saw an enceinte alley cat, or heard a terrier ratting in the barn. . .