George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the British government, the person in whom we have entrusted the economy of Great Britain, is being irresponsibly with respect to looking after his family cat: Freya – a tubby tabby. Some people might say that he is being irresponsible with the lives of British citizens too.
I don’t want to receive a comment (fat chance) from him saying his wife looks after the cat. A cat is a family responsibility. His wife looks very fragrant but, clearly, fragrance does not translate to good cat caretaking.
George works from No 11 Downing Street and lives there, too, as far as I am aware. To visitors not living in the UK, Downing Street is a very central location in London, close to the Thames and near the Houses of Parliament.
Freya is fat. OK, that is not unusual but it does demonstrate a careless approach to cat caretaking.
Far worse is the fact that Freya is allowed to wander around central London. Allowing a cat to roam is fine if the place where you live is reasonably safe from a cat’s perspective but central London? No. There is nothing but masses of dense traffic and Freya seems to be amongst it from time to time or a lot.
Freya has been seen in a public house (“pub”) on the other side of Whitehall. Whitehall is a busy and wide road that connects to Downing Street. She’ll have to cross it to get to the pub and journey fraught with danger.
Freya has also been seen in Trafalgar Square! Now, that is extraordinary. Trafalgar Square is at the end of Whitehall. It is about 800 metres from Downing Street and the traffic is awesome all along the route and at Trafalgar Square, unless Freya finds some fancy way to get there that avoids traffic.
The conclusion must be that the Osborne family are allowing their cat to roam widely in a place that is totally unsuited to it. Some cats are great at avoiding cars and lorries. They even learn to look and check but they are not that expert at it and eventually an accident is liable to happen, especially in the places around Downing Street.
It comes under unnecessary cosmetic surgery I think like tail docking and ear cropping of dogs.
Most people here haven’t even heard of declawing. One of our nieces who lives in London is married to an American and when they visited relatives over there she was horrified to see declawed cats.
The person they belonged to couldn’t understand why anyone would want cats with claws!
Unbelieveable to us that anyone would want to take a cat’s claws away.
Well, I think it is bad public relations for the government never mind the safety issues for Freya.
Declawing is not banned per se. We never did it. It never entered our heads to declaw cats.
The law (Animal Welfare Act 2006) bans animal cruelty and declawing happens to fall into that category and so it is a crime and it is banned. But there is no law that says “declawing is banned”.
Agreed. Wherever possible cats should be allowed to experience the smell of grass and earth and the air and to feel it under their feet.
It seems to be much the same here, my mother is seventy three and is still working full-time–no retirement in sight. This is so wrong.
Why feel uncomfortable Caroline, if you live in a safe cat friendly place like we do there’s no reason to keep your cat a prisoner. All cats should be able to be free to enjoy the life they were born for but people have made parts of the world too dangerous and if we lived in that part of London with heavy traffic we wouldn’t be able to let our cats roam as they can here.
But there is no law in the UK, the Pet Welfare Act doesn’t say cats must be kept in, they have ‘a roaming commission’ here.
It’s just a matter of common sense really of which Osborne has zero….like the rest of the government we have …for example there are millions of young unemployed people for lack of jobs so what do they do? Only put the retiring age up to 66 so that older people have to work until they drop while young ones live on benefits, then make it that 35 years will be enough contributions paid in for a state pension while people like my sister will have paid in 50+ by she’s allowed to retire. Ooooh don’t get me started about this government we ordinary people didn’t elect, but we have to suffer because of those who did let them in!
well, okay, i will take a photo stroll…
But still, why, when he, when they–is the gov’t. that disjointed? Doesn’t surprise me, but at least declawing of cats is banned. How did that come about, may I? How could even their media voice allow gov’t representative?/administrative feline to be walking the streets?