‘First feline’ Larry marks 15 years as UK’s top cat
In turbulent political times, stability comes with four legs, a moustache, and a penchant for naps.
Larry the cat celebrates 15 years on Sunday as the British government’s official rodent catcher and the first unofficial cat, a reassuring presence who has served under six prime ministers.
Sometimes they appear to have served under him.
“Larry the Cat’s approval ratings are going to be very high, and prime ministers don’t tend to hit those numbers,” said Philip Howell, a Cambridge University professor who studies the history of human-animal relations.
“It represents stability, and that’s very important.”
The grey-white tabby’s rags-to-riches story has taken him from wandering the streets to 10 Downing St, Britain’s center of power, where he carries the official title of Chief Mouser of the Cabinet Office.
Adopted from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in London by then prime minister David Cameron, Larry entered Downing St on February 15, 2011.
Their duties include welcoming guests into the home, inspecting security defenses and testing antique furniture “for slumber quality,” according to a profile on the UK government website.
Larry roams freely and has a knack for delighting news photographers when it comes to staging world leaders arriving at the famous black door of 10 Downing St.
“He’s great at photobombing,” said Justin Ng, a freelance photographer who has gotten to know Larry well over the years.
“We know that if there is a foreign leader about to visit, he or she will show up at the exact moment the meet-and-greet is about to take place.”
Larry has met many world leaders who sometimes had to go around or go beyond him.
She has been observed to be largely hostile towards men, although she likes former US president Barack Obama and received a smile from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during one of the Ukrainian leader’s visits to London.
When US President Donald Trump visited in 2019, Larry took the official doorstep photo and then took a nap under the president’s armored vehicle, the Beast.
Although reports of Larry’s rodent-catching skills vary, he was occasionally photographed catching a mouse and once an escaped pigeon.
“He is more of a lover than a fighter,” Ng said.
“He’s very good at what he does: going around and showing people that he’s very cool.”
Larry has lived together, sometimes uneasily, with his prime ministerial pets, including Boris Johnson’s Jack Russell mix Dilyn and Rishi Sunak’s Labrador retriever Nova.
While Larry runs the workspaces at Downing St., he is kept well away from family cats JoJo and Prince, who live in current Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s private family quarters.
He had a volatile relationship with Palmerston, the diplomatic head cat of No 10, opposite the Foreign Office.
The two were caught fighting several times before Palmerston retired in 2020. Palmerston died in February in Bermuda, where he served as the governor’s “cat relations advisor.”
Meanwhile, Larry is sleeping. He is 18 or 19 and has slowed down a bit but continues to patrol his home turf and sleep on the windowsill above the radiator just inside the Downing St door.
He is British soft power in cat form, and shame on any prime minister who gets rid of him.
“A Prime Minister who hates cats seems like political suicide to me,” Howell said.
He said Larry’s status as a nonpartisan “official pet” distinguishes him from the pets of the American presidency, mostly dogs, that U.S. leaders sometimes deploy to soften their images.
“The fact that cats are less docile is part of the appeal,” Howell said.
“He’s weirdly nonpartisan in a political sense, but he’s sympathetic to some people and not to others, and he doesn’t have to sit where you want him to sit and pose where you want him to pose.
“There’s a certain kind of rebelliousness about Larry that I think will definitely endear him to the British.”
