Larry the Cat welcomes yet another prime minister into No 10
Larry the cat welcomed his seventh prime minister, Andy Burnham, to No 10 Downing Street. The Makerfield MP’s arrival comes after he formally accepted King Charles’ invitation to form a government.
The esteemed 19-year-old Cabinet Chief Mouser has become a beloved fixture in British public life.
During his 15-year tenure he frequently appeared outside the Prime Minister’s residence in central London, often providing light relief during turbulent political moments for the various prime ministers he served.
Larry was adopted from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in February 2011 and was initially intended as a pet for the children of then prime minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha.
As chief mouser, he was tasked with controlling the rodent population in the building at the heart of the British Government, although his success is controversial.
Various felines have occupied this role since the 1920s, and there are also older historical records of cats in Government residences dating back to the reign of Henry VIII.
Larry, who is now over 90 in relative human ages, is believed to have committed his first murder on the job in April 2011, when he was four years old.
A favorite among the bank of press cameras, he was witnessed pouncing on a pigeon while the media waited for an update on post-Brexit negotiations with the EU. There were also strained relationships with other domesticated animals.
Larry was known to have had fights with the late Palmerston, a cat brought to Downing Street to control the mouse population in the Foreign Office buildings adjacent to him.
Former chancellor George Osborne’s cat Freya also had a fight with Larry when he lived in Downing Street, but the two were said to have largely co-existed peacefully.
Akshata Murty, wife of former prime minister and chancellor Rishi Sunak, once told Sky News that Larry had “heated arguments” with his family’s Labrador dog, Nova, while they lived in Downing Street and that the cat always “rose to the top”.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said in February last year that he initially had to keep his family’s Siberian cat Prince away from Larry in case the Downing Street veteran “didn’t like him”.
Starmers had two cats when he took office in 2024; Prince and Jojo.
Larry was also reportedly “not too keen on men”, according to Lord Cameron, who was surprised at how well the pet got along with then-US president Barack Obama, one of the many international guests Larry hosted at Downing Street.
The head mouse sometimes appears in official records of such visits, and can be seen lurking on the windowsill in a photograph of Baroness Theresa May taken when she was prime minister with US President Donald Trump.
