NEWS AND COMMENT: Ghislaine Maxwell and her father meowed 10 times before talking on the phone. This story has hit the news media and gone viral. As it is about cats, I feel that I have to wade in to the conversation. Robert Maxwell loved his children, Ian, Kevin and Ghislaine. It seems that his favourite was Ghislaine.
Robert Maxwell was a newspaper mogul and owned the Sunday Mirror. The Sunday Mirror editor at the time was Eve Pollard. She recalls Robert Maxwell asking if his daughter Ghislaine could work at the newspaper. She appears to have refused because she said that she was running a newspaper and didn’t think that Ghislaine wanted to be a journalist.
Ghislaine is Oxford educated and at the time she was considered to be beautiful. Carol Bragoli, the former Mirror Group secretary was able to listen in to Robert Maxwell’s phone calls with his daughter because he had the habit of leaving the phone on speaker. In fact, she says that he always had his phone on speaker because he couldn’t be bothered to pick up the device.
On one occasion – and we don’t know whether this happened on more than one occasion – Mr Maxwell was at his desk and Carol Bragoli had her back turned to him and heard the entire conversation; both what he said and what she said because of the speaker.
Reception put Ghislaine through and “the next thing I heard was ‘Meow’, and he went ‘Meow meow’ and she went ‘Meow’. This went on for about 10 meows and he suddenly said ‘What are you doing?’. In response she said ‘Nothing'”. Bragoli immediately thought that that was correct because clearly Ghislaine Maxwell was not doing an awful lot at the Mirror Group.
To meow once would be a bit of fun but to do it 10 times is excessive and peculiar. It must have been a sign of affection. So, I’ve got to try and figure out why it happened.
It is perhaps important to recognise that Ghislaine Maxwell started the meow conversation. She said ‘meow’ at him and he played along with the game. And she wanted to continue it because it was fun. That’s why it went on for 10 meows.
And the reason why Ghislaine Maxwell started off with a meow is because – and I’m guessing – she likes or even loves cats and because of that he probably gave her a nickname such as “pussycat” or something to do with cats. He knew that his daughter liked cats. They might have discussed it and as a consequence he sometimes related to her as his little pussycat daughter. Of course, I’m speculating but I think it’s a reasonable speculation.
It’s plausible because kittens are fluffy and gorgeous. Bob Maxwell probably saw a kitten-like character in his daughter.
I know that she likes cats because when Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested by the FBI at her reclusive house in the woods in New Hampshire at 8:20 AM on July 2, 2020, her cat was terrified because the front door was bashed down. Her cat ran off injured. It seems that her cat had gone to the front door out of inquisitiveness because of all the commotion outside. That’s how he or she became injured when the door was knocked down. Her cat ran off and it took them a long time to find him/her.
My guess is that she lived with a cat for a significant part of the life, whenever she could, before she was incarcerated pending her trial which as we know has taken place and is concluded. She is due to be sentenced in the not-too-distant future by the trial judge Alison Nathan. Although, as I understand it, her conviction is going to be appealed. That will put things back a bit more.
