Larry, The Downing Street Cat - What a week!

The week began in the usual Downing Street fashion, which is to say with all the drama of a lightly buttered crumpet. Nothing exploded, no one resigned before elevenses, and the nation carried on with the reassuring hum of mild bewilderment. My man servant had spent the weekend at Chequers, where he reportedly devoted himself to the strenuous national duties of tea consumption and watching Team GB collect gold medals. Then, as Wednesdays have a habit of doing when they’ve grown bored of being Wednesdays, the morning erupted. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor — the artist formerly known as Prince, and now apparently best known for other, less melodic pursuits — was arrested by police. The world’s media descended upon the scene with the delicate restraint of a herd of caffeinated wildebeest. Within minutes, Downing Street emptied as though someone had shouted “Free biscuits!” in the opposite direction. For a cat of a certain vintage — one whose plumbing is no longer what it was in the buoyant days of kittenhood — this was nothing short of a civic miracle. No preying eyes. No telescopic lenses trained upon one’s private constitutional arrangements. Just blessed, uninterrupted serenity. It was, in a word, heaven. If heaven includes a discreet shrub and a mild breeze. I could hear my man servant whistling — an unmistakable sign that the news cycle had shifted elsewhere — and regaling Rachel from accounts with jokes of such dubious quality. In an unguarded moment of cheer, he even stooped to photograph me. Me. The resident mouser emeritus. I detected in his expression the faint glimmer of affection, or possibly indigestion. It is often hard to tell with humans. The Andrew affair will, I suspect, trundle on for weeks, possibly years, with the King and assorted et als fielding questions of increasing awkwardness and decreasing clarity. But these are matters for bipeds in suits. As for me, provided there are tuna sandwiches at reliable intervals and a warm patch in which to curl into a shape reminiscent of a question mark, I shall consider the realm to be in perfectly adequate order. #larrythecat #larry #cats #cutecat #cutecats