It’s not been fully described in the newspapers but I have made the presumption that Sir Keir Starmer’s family live in the flat above number 11 Downing Street which is larger than the flat above 10 Downing Street. Although the flat above number 11 Downing Street is meant to be occupied by the Chancellor. Historically they swap flats because the Prime Minister has the bigger one.
Sir Kier Starmer, Britain’s Prime Minister, has, with the approval of his children, adopted he says a ‘Siberian’ cat. This is a purebred cat but sometimes people say they adopt a Siberian cat when they mean a tabby cat and I’m not sure whether this is a purebred Siberian but they have adopted her/him nonetheless and it took a lot of negotiations between their children and Sir Kier Starmer and Lady Starmer.
Sir Kier has two children and he said that his daughter, 13, had gone to “pick up their new cat, a Siberian, yesterday.”
He added that “This is an agreement after long negotiations. I said we’d get in the room and sort it out.”
“Over the course of several months, Dir Kier Starmer’s two children had been petitioning their father to buy them a German Shepherd dog. After a long summer of negotiations involving much back-and-forth and different options, the family had arrived at a compromise of getting a kitten instead”. Sir Kier was speaking to the BBC.
I am pleased that they did not by a German Shepherd dog because, for me, this is an overbred animal with a very peculiar sloping back which I think is an abuse and highly unfortunate. And they are very territorial as we know from the experiences of Joe Biden at the White House whose German Shepherd named Commander had to be removed and retired off because he had bitten secret service staff multiple times in protection of his territory. This was a territorial problem and the German Shepherd is unsuited it seems to places where there are lots of comings and goings of strangers because the dog wants to protect their master from the strangers.
They are yet to name their new Siberian cat which becomes “the third in Downing Street’s growing feline population”.
We all know about Larry, the resident mouser who lives within number 10 Downing Street as a house cat and you’ll see him outside in the street and environs which I’ve always thought is dangerous but he is 17 years of age and has lived a full life there quite safely. Despite getting into fights with the foreign office cat who is now retired.
It is said that the Siberian is hypoallergenic meaning it doesn’t cause an allergic reaction in people but this I think you will find is a misconception. Breeders like to claim that their cats are hypoallergenic but in truth they are not because no domestic cat whether purebred or random bread is hypoallergenic. I wonder whether the Starmer family adopted the Siberian for this reason? If they did they might be disappointed. It does point to the possibility that somebody in the family is allergic to cats. I don’t know. Just speculating.
There’s lots of talk about what to do about Larry because he’s become old and a bit geriatric and they want to make sure he had a good retirement. He might be pensioned-off which might be a good idea because you don’t really want three cats at number 10 Downing Street.
I wonder whether the new Siberian might take over the mousing duties from Larry? That might be discussed. The problem is that what does Larry think about the new addition? He’s a long-term resident cat and in this story, we encounter the very common problems of introducing a new cat to a resident cat’s territory. It can be problematic and normally is because most domestic cats like to protect their territory.
The Times reports that Sir Kier Starmer was asked “how Larry, now aged 17, would feel about the arrival of a younger counterpart.” Starmer said: “The problem we’ve got, which is the same for JoJo the cat [the other cat that they have I believe] is that the only door out of our new flat is bombproof. And therefore, getting a cat flap is proving a little difficult. But our daughter has persuaded us that the problem isn’t any bigger for two cats than one”. Not sure about the point f that statement. You can’t put a cat flap in a bomb-proof door.
The story is evolving but the Starmer family have installed their new cat in their flat above number 10’s offices (or above No. 11) and therefore this is a full-time indoor cat without a cat flap. This would follow in the modern trend which is towards full-time indoor cats. But the big, big question is can they make that very precious flat’s environment suitable for an indoor cat?
That takes a lot of commitment and it takes a lot of compromise because what a domestic cat likes in the environment is different to what a human likes. You have to mess up the aesthetics of the apartment so it doesn’t look great for human but looks wonderful for a cat. Not a lot of people want to do that.
“Cats have been employed by the British government for centuries but only in 1929 was a black cat called Peter given the title of chief mouser to the Cabinet Office. He served for 17 years under five prime ministers. In the 1940s he was joined by the Munich Mouser, named after the 1938 agreement signed by Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler.” (The Times)
In 1958 a Downing Street Mouser call Peter III achieved some fame and appeared on the BBC’s Tonight show. “The first female, Peta [I guess named after the animal rights organisation] was described as ‘inordinately fat and lazy because she had been fed so many treats’. She was rumoured to have fought with Harold Wilson’s cat Nemo, injuring Wilson’s wife, Mary, as she was trying to break up the scuffle”.
Many years ago, I was a professional photographer. I photographed Mary Wilson at number 10 Downing Street. It wasn’t a great photograph because it was very hard to do by which I mean to make it look interesting. It was a standard photograph taken with flashlight but I didn’t screw up and it was published in magazines.
