Amidst the ever-shifting landscape of British politics, a steadfast presence with four legs, whiskers, and a penchant for napping marks a significant milestone.
Larry the cat, the nation’s official rodent-catcher and unofficial first feline, celebrates 15 years of service this Sunday, having provided a reassuring constant under six prime ministers. Indeed, some might suggest the prime ministers have served under him.
“Larry the cat’s approval ratings will be very high,” noted Philip Howell, a Cambridge University professor who has delved into the history of human-animal relations. “And prime ministers tend not to hit those numbers. He represents stability, and that’s at a premium.”
Larry’s remarkable journey saw him transition from a stray on London’s streets to the hallowed halls of 10 Downing Street, where he holds the esteemed title of Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office.
Adopted from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home by then-Prime Minister David Cameron, Larry made his debut on 15 February 2011. His official duties, as outlined on the UK government website, encompass “greeting guests to the house, inspecting security defenses and testing antique furniture for napping quality.”
The grey-and-white tabby enjoys free rein, often seizing the opportunity to upstage world leaders as they arrive at Downing Street’s iconic black door, much to the delight of news photographers. “He’s great at photo-bombing,” remarked Justin Ng, a freelance photographer who has observed Larry over the years. “If there’s a foreign leader that’s about to visit then we know he’ll just come out at the exact moment that meet-and-greet is about to happen.”
Larry has encountered numerous global figures, who occasionally find themselves navigating around or over him. While generally perceived as aloof towards men, he notably took a liking to Barack Obama and elicited a smile from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during one of the Ukrainian leader’s visits to London.
When U.S. President Donald Trump visited in 2019, Larry famously crashed the official doorstep photo opportunity before settling down for a nap beneath the presidential armoured car, ‘The Beast’.
Reports on Larry’s rodent-catching prowess vary, though he has been photographed with an occasional mouse – and once, a pigeon, which ultimately escaped. “He’s more of a lover than a fighter,” Ng quipped. “He’s very good at what he does: lounging around and basically showing people that he’s very nonchalant.”
Larry has shared his residence, sometimes uneasily, with various prime ministerial pets, including Boris Johnson’s Jack Russell cross Dilyn and Rishi Sunak’s Labrador retriever Nova. He is kept separate from current Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s family cats, JoJo and Prince, who reside in the private quarters, leaving Larry to preside over the working areas of Downing Street.
He also maintained a famously volatile rivalry with Palmerston, the diplomatic top cat at the Foreign Office across the street, with the pair frequently caught tussling before Palmerston’s retirement in 2020. Palmerston sadly passed away this month in Bermuda, where he had been serving as “feline relations consultant” to the governor.
Now aged 18 or 19, Larry has slowed somewhat but continues to patrol his territory and nap on a window ledge above a radiator just inside the No. 10 door. He embodies British soft power in feline form, and any prime minister contemplating his removal would face significant public backlash. “A cat-hating PM, that seems to me to be political suicide,” Howell asserted.
He highlighted Larry’s nonpartisan status as an “official pet,” distinguishing him from American presidential pets, often dogs, used by leaders to soften their image. “The fact that cats are less tractable is part of the charm, too,” Howell added. “He’s sort of whimsically not partisan in a political sense, but he tends to take to some people and not to others and he won’t necessarily sit where you want him to sit and pose where you want him to pose. There is a certain kind of unruliness about Larry which I think would endear him, certainly, to
