Prime Factors - Ranking UK Prime Ministers

Larry the Cat & 10 Downing Street (Feat. Kit from Prime Time)

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Larry the Cat & 10 Downing Street (Feat. Kit from Prime Time)

Episode Transcript

Joe: Hello. One year ago, Abram and I sat down around a kitchen table to record our very first episode of Prime Factors. We did it for ourselves. We were only planning to share it with a few friends and family. And we posted it online. We started getting comments and a few listeners and followers, and we're so grateful that you have decided to join our journey with us. Please enjoy this anniversary episode of Prime Factors, which is a little bit odder than usual, but still has some fantastic history.

Abram: Welcome to Prime Factors. This week, Larry the Cat.

Parliament: Hip hip! Prime Factors! Hip hip! Prime Factors!

Abram: Hello and welcome back to Prime Factors. I'm Abram, and I'm here with my dad.

Kit: And I'm Kess, from Prime Time. I'm really pleased to be here. I've come all the way across the Atlantic to hang out with you guys today.

Abram: We are reviewing all of the Chief Mousers of the United Kingdom, from Treasury Bill to Larry the Cat. This is episode twelve, "Larry the Cat." We finally made it! It's so exciting!

Joe: Well, Abram, we're very close finally to reviewing all the cats. What do you think we should review next?

Abram: Maybe some of the people, like the 10 Downing Street chef, or the people that clean the carpets. We could review the prime ministers, but they are so boring. Can you imagine trying to make Spencer Compton interesting?

Kit: I totally agree with you, Abram. I think, who would do a podcast about prime ministers? Can you imagine 50 episodes about boring old men?

Joe: Yeah, prime ministers, oh, that'd be bad. Churchill might be fine. He had a pretty cool cat, right? But presidential systems, they're better.

Abram: Though we might not be able to do any presidential ones considering one of the big boys, Totalus Rankium, was— at least is or was doing that.

Kit: Okay, well it sounds like we'd better get on with the episode then.

Abram: Don't forget that you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and at www.primefactorspodcast.com. We're also on Facebook and BlueSky. If you enjoy listening, please like, subscribe, comment, and review.

Picture This

Joe: Close your eyes. We're traveling back in time, back, back to an unimaginably different era. January 2011. Disney's Tangled is in theaters, Downton Abbey was popular on the telly, and Matt Smith was playing the eleventh Doctor on Doctor Who. And for you, Abram, do you know what Scooby-Doo show was on?

Abram: Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated.

Joe: Yes. What else was going on in 2011?

Kit: I met John and Rob for the first time, myself and my other co-hosts.

Joe: That is amazing. We're high above London now, descending on the Westminster section where people drive 2011 cars and wear 2011 fashion and 2011—

Abram: That's a lot of fashion.

Joe: And 2011 shoes, which are all, of course, very different from what we have now.

Abram: Yeah, people don't wear 2011 shoes anymore. People wear 2— If you are the centipede, you wear 42.

Joe: So we're zooming past St. James's Park and past the rectangular sign that reads "Downing Street," past some police and a cadre of reporters, before finally arriving at one of the world's most famous doorsteps: Number 10 Downing Street. David Cameron, the current Prime Minister, is inside, but this isn't an episode about him because he's, remember, one of those boring, stuffy old men. Oh yes. A group of newscasters are pointing their camera at the Number 10 door. The cameraman watching a man with a long dark coat and blue tie drone on about something unimportant, but he's doing it on the BBC and in a British accent, so it naturally sounds amazing. The man's name is Gary O'Donoghue, and he's not that important for the story.

Gary: Well, Michelle, this is going to be a major speech on public service reform by the Prime Minister. Tomorrow he'll talk about his political and personal priorities, and he'll go back to talk about the doctors that looked after his son.

Joe: As Gary continues his report, there's a flash of movement on the Number 10 front stoop. A dark brown shape scurries across the scene in full view of BBC cameras. Gary doesn't stop. He doesn't notice the giant rat behind him, but every viewer sees it. Within hours, the British press is buzzing. It isn't just a rat on 10 Downing Street. It's a metaphor for David Cameron's time as Prime Minister. Newspapers place the rat on the front page. The morning news shows cannot stop replaying Gary's report. The press secretary calls an emergency meeting. Something must be done about this. They're going to need a cat.

Kit: A prime cat?

Joe: No, a chief cat. A heroic public servant that will enter government and solve this one, slightly embarrassing problem that's facing Britain. A call was made to Battersea Dogs and Cats Home asking for a great mouser, a cat that could really solve the problems that plagued Cameron's government. Somewhere in the background of the call, you hear a snigger. Sure, we'll find you a good mouser. They were probably wearing like a Labour t-shirt. Hours later, a special car pulled up outside the door of Number 10. A white-gloved doorman retrieves a special box from the back seat of the car and delivers it to the Prime Minister's home. Welcome, Larry, you are now the Chief Mouser of the United Kingdom.

Kit: Do we think this was like the most effective piece of like political sabotage?

Abram: The only problem with that is how a cat that lives one or two buildings— be the Chief Mouser for an entire country? How do you expect two buildings to account for the same thing as an entire country? How do you expect that?

Joe: It's called metaphor.

Kit: Yeah, it's a symbolic role.

Abram: Meow, meow, meow, meow. Uh, sorry.

The First Cat In Government

Joe: We're not going to be able to keep up the fiction that we reviewed eleven of the twelve Chief Mousers. This is going to be a fun episode. We have a guest star. Hi, Kess.

Kit: I am delighted to be here. I'm not sure I'd call myself a star, but I'm definitely a guest.

Joe: This is going to be a fun episode where we talk about Larry, but we're also going to discuss some of the very real history that led to the idea that is the Chief Mouser. I promise you that Grenville is coming soon. This is our third special episode during Grenville, and I feel bad about that, but we needed to do the TV station one because they wanted to interview with us, and then Intelligent Speech came up and blah, blah, blah. We'll get there, and we're gonna record a special episode next month also.

Abram: So what will that one be? That's what we're planning on recording with the first time where we're— off all three of the Prime Time people.

Joe: I don't know if Kess is joining.

Abram: The first time of the other two.

Joe: Yeah, we'll work it out. So the role of Chief Mouser, just like prime ministers and everything else in the British system, evolved over time. Larry might— might have been the first cat to get that title officially, but he's the twelfth cat that was on the Home Office payroll. At least according to Wikipedia.

Abram: Wait, cats get paid?

Joe: Yes.

Abram: They're cats. How can they expect to deal with money?

Joe: We'll talk about that in a minute. Potentially, the first cat in government is actually this one right here.

Abram: That looks like a person.

Joe: Look to the left.

Abram: Oh yeah, there's a tiny cat, but this statue's of the person.

Joe: Yes, this statue is of a person. I don't know if you can see that.

Kit: Yeah, that's Cardinal Wolsey.

Joe: This is Cardinal Wolsey, everyone's favorite cardinal. No, it is Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII from 1515 to 1529. He is one of the pre-Walpole prime ministers that was on eighteenth century lists. So neither one of you saw my Intelligent Speech presentation, but I went through a book from 1733 that lists all the prime ministers. That of course listed a whole bunch that were pre-Walpole.

Abram: It didn't list Walpole.

Joe: It did list Walpole, and then it went to Carteret because it even— it didn't think Spencer Compton was worth talking about.

Abram: Oh, because he's boring.

Joe: Spencer Compton being boring is going to be like the through line of our entire podcast. I think we'll be talking about that in the end. Anyway, very briefly, Thomas Wolsey was a priest and a chaplain to Henry VII. He managed to snag a job as the Chief Almoner.

Abram: Almoner? Does he make almonds for the church? Like, wouldn't that not be related to a church if his job was to make almonds?

Joe: Yes, he makes almonds. No, he gives money to the poor. That's his job.

Abram: Does he give almonds to the poor as well?

Joe: If they have them available, yes.

Abram: Imagine if they were allergic to them. That wouldn't be good.

Joe: Yeah, they had less allergies back then. It's something about being surrounded by poop all the time, I assume. Anyway, he became the Chief Almoner to Henry VIII. In a story that would make an absolutely fantastic Prime Factors episode, he rose quickly in the English government and the Catholic Church at the same time, ending up not only as the Lord Chancellor but also the Archbishop of York and a Cardinal. Do you even know what a Cardinal is, Abram?

Abram: No.

Joe: A Cardinal is one of the people that elect the Pope. So like the highest archbishops can become Cardinals, and they get to be the ones that try to elect the Pope. Hopefully we don't have one of those very soon, but maybe we probably will. When Henry VIII wanted to get rid of Catherine of Aragon, his first wife, he asked Wolsey to do it, and Wolsey failed. And so Henry blamed him for secretly not wanting him to get divorced. So their friendship ended. Henry fired him. He accused him of treason. But Henry was a very bloodthirsty guy for more than just his wives. Well, he would have killed him. First, he was going to put him on trial. And the only thing that saved Wolsey from getting put on trial and executed is that he died of dysentery on the way.

Abram: If you ever make the slideshow version, will you show the famous "you died of dysentery" screen?

Kit: Like in the Oregon Trail.

Joe: Oh, yes. Why are we talking about Wolsey? Because by the Victorian era, this image from the statue of Wolsey as a cat lover had taken root. Wolsey was said to have had cats with him at mass. He took cats to important government meetings. Two cats supposedly went with him when he went to overseas meetings. And by the time the statue was made, also in 2011, cats had become an important part of the historical image. But those cats probably didn't really exist. In Tudor England, cats were bad luck, the tools of the devil. Pope Innocent VIII had only recently spoken out against cats. So having a Cardinal thirty years later with cats as pets is a little bit unlikely. The earliest reference I can find to Wolsey and cats is actually from 1827, when Wolsey was said to not have cats, and it was actually Archbishop Laud, which is some other guy who's very important in English history that we're not gonna talk about today. He had cats and Wolsey didn't. So I would really love to think of this, and if we ever go to Ipswich, I wanna see this. Have you ever been to Ipswich?

Kit: I have.

Abram: I've been to Ipswich in Massachusetts, I assume.

Joe: Well, we have been to Ipswich, Mass. Yeah.

Abram: Really?

Joe: Probably.

Abram: It's near Gloucester.

Joe: Yeah, it doesn't have this statue. So I really want to believe that Wolsey was a secret cat lover, but we're going to have to fast forward a couple hundred years before we get to the first real cats in government.

Abram: Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow. Sorry again. I'll make sure not to do this later on.

The First Cats On The Payroll

Joe: We're going to have to jump ahead to 1909 to find the first cat that I can find officially on the government payroll. That is Frilly, a cat granted a food stipend to catch mice at the British War Office. But I really doubt that's the first one, right? Mice and rats were an endemic problem in old government buildings. Abram, have you ever seen The Nutcracker?

Abram: No.

Joe: This goes nowhere.

Kit: There ends that theory.

Abram: I know there's a big rat.

Joe: There is a big rat. Okay. The point of The Nutcracker is that there's lots of mice, and even well-to-do houses back in the 1900s had mice. Before we get too far, let's set some ground rules for this idea of a Chief Mouser. Wikipedia defines twelve cats, and that's pretty similar to other lists I could find, but it's not consistent. But we're just going to go with it.

Abram: You shouldn't ever trust—

Joe: True. Some of the Chief Mousers were the Prime Minister's personal cats, like Treasury Bill. The first one belonged to Ramsay MacDonald. Nelson, the fourth one, belonged to Winston Churchill. But not all prime minister cats are Chief Mousers.

Kit: Treasury Bill MacDonald sounds like a sort of 1920s adventurer.

Joe: That is so cool. I just want to see a little cat with a fedora.

Kit: Yeah, he'd have a big hat, maybe a sword. I'm picturing the cat from Shrek, I think.

Joe: Oh, have you seen Shrek?

Abram: Yes, a long time ago.

Joe: Not all prime minister cats are considered the Chief Mouser, however. Harold Wilson's cat Nemo wasn't on the list. Keir Starmer's cats JoJo and Prince aren't on that list. Why? I don't know. It's Britain. Some of the cats are owned by other members of the cabinet. So Sybil and Freya, the tenth and twelfth Chief Mousers, belonged to Chancellors of the Exchequer Alistair Darling and George Osborne. But most of the cats, like Larry, are owned by the government and are considered civil servants rather than family pets. They have stipends paid for by the government.

Abram: So they kind of get paid.

Joe: Their room and board and food and litter boxes get paid for. In Larry's case, actually, he even has staff. There are cats at the Cabinet Office that are mousers, but not the Chief Mousers. I'm not sure if they're currently there. There was Evie and Ossie a couple of years ago that were mousers but not Chief Mousers. I cannot find any press. Like, I saw them being announced as arriving, but that was like ten years ago, so maybe they're still there. They never announced that they died, so who knows. To the extent that the Office of the Chief Mouser started anywhere, it started either in 1924 or 1929, both in cases involving Ramsay MacDonald's cat, called by Ramsay "Rufus of England," but everyone else called him Treasury Bill.

Kit: Rufus of England is like an Anglo-Saxon monarch. Do you not think it sounds like that? I can imagine he's somewhere between Athelstan and—

Joe: I think you're right. I think it does sound like that.

Abram: But it would make sense if he was Rufusstan then.

Kit: Yeah, Rufusstan's a great name. But then Treasury Bill's from Texas, for sure.

Abram: Yeah, definitely. I was thinking about that. Last minute Treasury Bill!

Joe: Supposedly in 1924, Treasury Bill was looking thin and worn. A Treasury Secretary appealed for him to receive an increase in food, and this was brought up all the way to the Treasury Board, who denied the request. But Treasury Bill snuck into the office of the Chancellor of the Exchequer— that was Philip Snowden— and just made himself adorable, as cats do. And Snowden supposedly scrawled a note in the ledger: "Treasury vote, approve increase in cat's pay." That's really— I love that.

Kit: That's really funny that that's a government record. My cat would do the same thing.

Joe: So I don't believe that story, but it's a good one.

Kit: I believe it.

Joe: The more common story is that in 1929, the Office Keeper of 10 Downing Street sought a penny-a-day allowance for the "maintenance of an efficient office cat." Or about $170 US per year. Sorry, I don't know what that is in euros or British pounds. This doesn't buy much food or cat litter, but perhaps they used the cheap and non-clumping kind. That penny a day was used to adopt Peter, later known as Peter I or Peter One. Some lists say that he was the first and that Treasury Bill was just Ramsay MacDonald's personal cat. And I think that anyone that cares this much about whether cute cats have fake government titles should absolutely start a podcast.

Abram: Fake? You call this fake? We've been doing a whole podcast on this.

Two Poems About Cats in Wartime

Joe: During World War II, British government offices were spread across England, and many of them wanted cats. And we have an amazing poem from 1941 that was written by an anonymous accountant that summarizes the situation better than I ever could. Kess, do you want to read it?

Kit: Yeah, I'll do it if you want. "Establishments approval seek to spend, say, one and six per week, for beverage and food, ersatz, on each of Bournemouth's Office cats. The situation is complex because we do not know their sex. To pay for grub, we hesitate for pussies who may propagate. But if they'll give a guarantee they won't produce a family of little mousers of their ilk, we'll meet the costs of food and milk."

Joe: I cannot tell you how much I love that poem, actually.

Kit: It's really good. I like it.

Joe: It's like Britain at war, 1941, had to have been a tough time.

Kit: And like, we are in our darkest hour, but we've got our priorities sorted. We're like, are the cats okay?

Joe: When the poem says "one and six per week," what they mean is one shilling six pence in British old pre-decimal currency, or about $320 today if you're keeping track. So Peter at this point had been joined by Bob, a cat that had served under Neville Chamberlain. After Chamberlain's famous capitulation to Germany, Churchill renamed Bob into the Munich Mouser, or Munich for short.

Abram: This minute, the Munich Mouser.

Joe: Churchill also brought his own cat, Nelson, when he—

Abram: This minute, Nelson.

Joe: When he became Prime Minister. Bob, or rather Munich, was said at the time to be directly descended from one of Wolsey's cats, whom I just claimed didn't exist. Oops. But by 1946, Britain was a country in deep austerity. The wartime debts were high and many British families struggled to make ends meet. And by this time, Peter was seventeen and barely able to get around, let alone catch mice. But because that original funding request was for a, quote, "efficient office cat," and because British people can sometimes be literal-minded, someone in the Home Office decided that it was time for Peter to retire. Or rather be put to sleep.

Abram: Oh, they did that to Peter!

Joe: So that accountant was still around in 1946, and he penned one final update poem on the life of Peter I.

Kit: "I note a cruel coup d'état deprived us of the office cat. Two bob well spent without a doubt to help poor Peter peter out." Oh, Peter! Oh dear! Oh, got very dark.

Joe: Peter I was quickly followed by Peter II.

Abram: This minute, Peter II!

Joe: But he was struck by a car after six months and replaced for nearly two decades by Peter III.

Abram: This minute, Peter III!

Kit: Three Peters in quick succession there.

A Feline Celebrity & A Smelly Diplomat

Joe: As the 1950s became the 1960s, Britain and worldwide culture was changing. Television was increasingly the medium used to communicate with the masses, and the British government was not slow to adopt TV to get their message out. Queen Elizabeth's coronation in 1953 was the first such to be televised. And perhaps not less important, Peter III was the first Chief Mouser to appear on TV, appearing on an episode of BBC Evening News Tonight in 1958.

Kit: I bet that was a great interview.

Joe: I imagine it involved some meowing. I've actually seen a picture of this, and the cat just looks horrified.

Kit: So classic 1950s BBC.

Joe: Peter was a celebrity. He received fan mail from around the world, but he was not the most well-behaved cat. In one famous incident from 1960, the Queen was visiting 10 Downing Street, and as she was walking through, Peter was in a room that she was planning on walking into, and he defecated on a doormat.

Abram: What's that mean?

Joe: He pooped on the rug. As the Queen is walking through Downing Street wearing really important Queen garb, she's going to go into this room, and the cat decides now is a good time to poop on the doormat. He probably wasn't getting enough attention or scratches or something.

Kit: He was very anti-monarchy.

Joe: And the day was only saved by a civil servant who picked up the whole doormat and chucked it out the window.

Kit: You don't want to be walking down the street in that moment, do you?

Abram: A poopy doormat. I'm just minding my own business. Wait, ew, that's a poopy doormat.

Joe: Peter III died of a liver infection in 1964, and it would soon be time for Peter IV.

Abram: This minute, Peter IV.

Joe: Except there was no Peter IV. Instead, the Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man donated a new Manx cat, a breed native to that island, to the UK government to serve as their new cat. But since this Peter was a girl, they instead named her Peta.

Abram: This minute, Peta.

Joe: And that was at least easier to pronounce than her native name of Manninagh KateDhu.

Abram: So where were they from?

Joe: Isle of Man.

Kit: The Manx language is a kind of Gaelic, Abram. So I'm from Cornwall, which is Celtic. And Gaelic and Celtic, there's a lot of overlap between them. So you've got places like Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall, Wales, and then of course also the Isle of Man and the Guernsey Isles. Overlap with it, and so you get these Gaelic languages, which are still quite widely spoken in those countries and in those areas.

Joe: Would you know how to pronounce this cat's name better than I can?

Kit: No. I would guess it was something like "Manina," but then "KateDhu," I have no idea the second bit. I don't know. I'm letting down my Cornish roots.

Joe: As a diplomatic cat, however, they had far more challenges than the adopted cats that had come before. For one, the staff at Number 10 needed to ensure that she was not harmed. Were she to be hit by a car like poor Peter II, it would cause an international incident. And because she was so important, her allowance was increased to what is now about $410 a year. Peta was going to be confined to the house and not permitted to roam the grounds as her predecessors had done. And that was especially unfortunate because Peta was not housebroken. Despite her high status, she did not consistently use a litter box and was known to make messes around the office. She wasn't popular, but she was also very difficult to get rid of because getting rid of her would cause offense. So when Harold Wilson came to the office in 1964, he brought his own Siamese cat, Nemo, with him, and Nemo and Peta would fight all the time. By 1967, Peta's dirty habits were causing problems for the government. One civil servant wrote, quote, "Day after day she leaves a most unpleasant smell either in my room or in one of the adjoining rooms, and I feel sure that I could get up a petition for her removal."

Abram: But at some point they just slipped her off into retirement, sometime around like 1970, somewhere in there.

Joe: The government adopted Wilberforce in 1973, so it might have coincided with her retirement. But maybe not.

Kit: Wilberforce is a great name. I think Wilberforce and— what was it? Calamity Bill are going to go on adventures together.

Abram: This minute, Wilberforce.

Joe: Wilberforce is named for the anti-slavery crusader William Wilberforce. He was actually the Number 10 cat for a long time. And one newspaper wrote of him, quote, "Governments may come and go, prime ministers may pass in the night, but Wilberforce goes on forever, untroubled by the mighty events that go on around his twitching whiskers." On Wilberforce's retirement, he was gifted a can of sardines by Margaret Thatcher. She actually picked them up in Russia. So she made a very famous 1987 trip to Russia to meet Mikhail Gorbachev. She went to a supermarket, found that they had no food except sardines. So she's like, hey, I'll pick this up for Wilberforce. And she gave it to him for his retirement. Two years later, a stray cat named Humphrey just walked in from the street. And rather than kick him out, Thatcher opted to employ him as the next Chief Mouser.

Abram: This minute, Humphrey!

Kit: I was gonna say, I think that's how Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, but maybe that's too political a joke.

Joe: Sorry.

Abram: Okay, continue.

Joe: So despite nearly being run over by Bill Clinton in 1995, Humphrey lived to retirement age.

Kit: Well, that could have been a major diplomatic incident, couldn't it? World War III there.

Joe: He was the first Chief Mouser actually to be granted a pension, £100 per year, which is about $330 today. And he was the first cat that I could find that was actually called Chief Mouser, despite Wikipedia utterly insisting that Larry was the first. So what that means, I don't know. But now that we're just about to the modern day, perhaps we should pause and ask ourselves, why does Downing Street need a cat?

Why Does Downing Street Need a Cat

Joe: Someday, because we have a card about it, we're going to do a full episode on 10 Downing Street, but we cannot talk about their cats without talking a little bit about the home itself. So Abram, here is a picture of 10 Downing Street, which Kess absolutely does not need. Like the White House in the US, Downing Street serves three roles. It's the home of the Prime Minister, it's a government office, and it's a place for meetings and receptions where important people can come by for a chat or a photo op. But Number 10 isn't even one building. It's a complex of multiple connected buildings, including Number 10, Number 11, Number 12, and a house behind it which used to be on Horse Guards Avenue. Downing Street itself is named for George Downing.

Abram: Where's the map?

Joe: Oh yes, Abram, here is a map of the first floor of 10 Downing Street. I don't know if the other floors are secret because I can't find any maps of the other floors.

Kit: They will be secret. You're actually not allowed to film in various areas of Downing Street. And when Love Actually was made, that famous British Christmas film, which involves a Prime Minister character, when they wanted to make the set for Love Actually, they had to memorize what it looked like. They weren't allowed to take any pictures inside. So when they wanted to recreate Downing Street, they just had to do it from memory. I think for security reasons.

Joe: That is amazing.

Abram: So is it like inside the buildings or like the whole area?

Kit: I think it's inside. Like, it's got to be top secret inside, just in case, so that if anyone does manage to break in, you don't know where the panic room is.

Joe: Let's talk a little bit about George Downing. He was born in Kent in 1623, but his family moved to New England in 1638, and they settled in Salem, Massachusetts.

Abram: Okay, I've probably been there.

Joe: Yes, you've been to Salem.

Kit: Have you? That's very cool.

Joe: I have been there on Halloween. I don't recommend it. No, it's tourist city. It is crazy time. But Salem had just been founded, so this is very early days New England. George Downing attended Harvard College. He was in the first graduating class. In 1645, he joined a slaving ship as a preacher because I guess they needed one.

Kit: Uh, yeah, not great.

Joe: But by 1650, returned to England, joined the English Civil War on the Republican side, fought in multiple battles.

Abram: Which side?

Joe: The anti-monarchist side. He was elected as an MP for Edinburgh, which is amazing because this was well before 1707. But it turned out that Oliver Cromwell consolidated England and Scotland for a couple of years.

Abram: Yes, he consolidated England and Scotland because he also defeated Scotland in 1651, two years after he defeated England.

Kit: Great knowledge, Abram. I didn't know that.

Joe: Never underestimate Abram with dates.

Abram: So Charles II was actually King of Scotland for two years before 1660. Was he?

Kit: That's so interesting.

Abram: He was actually King of Scotland for two years longer than England.

Joe: Technically, I think they both backdated his ascension to when his father died, but I think in practicality he was.

Kit: He was. That's really cool.

Joe: George Downing became a diplomat, but he gradually became disenfranchised with the Republican movement. He pushed at times for Cromwell to become King Oliver. And then when that didn't work, he just advocated for the return of the monarchy. Downing helped the future Charles II to escape arrest in the Netherlands when they tried to sneakily arrest him. He recanted his republican views, blaming them on his poor New England education.

Kit: Is he saying America made him a republican?

Joe: Yes, yes, that's what he said. Harvard, you know, spoiled him.

Abram: You work there sometimes.

Joe: I do work there. So Charles II rewarded him with land and a knighthood when he reclaimed the throne, including a plot near St. James's Park in Westminster, but he wasn't able to fully secure the leases until 1682. And by that point, he got into property speculation. He built a small cul-de-sac, dead-end street, near the park, which he named for himself because why not. He began constructing somewhere between fifteen and twenty terraced houses, which he could sell to rich Londoners that wanted to live near the seat of government. So to maximize profits, the houses were built with poor foundations that were not deep enough for the boggy ground. He cut corners everywhere. Instead of brick façades, he simply drew bricks in the mortar lines to give the impression that they were brick buildings.

Abram: So wait, this isn't actually brick?

Joe: No.

Kit: He's making a movie set.

Joe: They were seventeenth-century McMansions.

Abram: That sounds like a mansion that was made by McDonald's.

Joe: Pretty much.

Abram: So let's just say they're mansions made by McDonald's.

Joe: Yep. They were cheap, mass-produced, expensive-looking but not expensive to build, that he could flip to wealthy people for a profit and be out of there in an instant. The current numbering didn't exist. What's now Number 10 was Number 5, and that was true until like 1779. The home that would be Number 10, you can sort of see a progression as his ideas gradually, well, started falling apart.

Abram: What do you mean?

Joe: The first occupant was the Countess of Yarmouth. Great, you know, Countess, right? And she's— the next one was a Lord, Lord Landsdown. The third, an Earl, so same level as a Countess, the Earl of Grantham. But by 1730, the importance of the occupants had declined. And the last known owner was someone named Mr. Chicken.

Abram: Really?

Joe: Yes. And Mr. Chicken occupied it till 1730.

Abram: What's his last name? Chicken?

Joe: Yes, his last name was Chicken.

Kit: It really was a McMansion then, wasn't it?

Joe: At that point, George I gave the house to Robert Walpole, although Robert Walpole insisted that it be given to his office as First Lord of the Treasury. Walpole only moved in himself after extensive renovations, connecting 10 and 11, adding the house in the back. And you can sort of see some of that on the map.

Kit: It was because he had so many houses already, Robert Walpole. He had too many houses and he was like, well, I can't have another one. You'd better give it to my job.

Joe: Yeah, makes sense to me. So Walpole was for a time the only prime minister to use it. Every subsequent prime minister just stayed in his own house in London until George Grenville, the first one that was probably poor enough to not have a nicer house in London. After Grenville, it skips a bit to Lord North, and then eventually it becomes like the official customary home. But even in the 1800s, some of them didn't live there. They still lived in their own house.

Abram: But by the 1900s, did they all like live there?

Joe: Yeah. In the hundreds of years since, there have been several renovations. At one point, they discovered that the house was originally painted yellow and that the black was just soot.

Kit: That is so Victorian London.

Joe: Yes. They decided that they wanted to keep the black color, so now it's painted black, but it was originally yellow.

Kit: I kind of wish it was still yellow.

Joe: It would completely change the nature of British politics.

Kit: Can you imagine making a really important statement outside the Yellow House?

Joe: Why?

Abram: Because the Black 10 is famous.

Joe: Despite the renovations, they never quite got past the fact that Number 10 was a shabbily built house with a poor foundation that was built near a park. There were plenty of holes for mice to get in, constant problems with roof leaks, the heating system, and more. Winston Churchill said that the place was "shaky and lightly built," and one estimate that I found said that the house needs about four years of non-occupied work to modernize it and fix all the problems, but none of the recent prime ministers thought they would last four years, and none of them wanted to kick off a renovation that they wouldn't be around for the end of.

Kit: That's real confidence in yourself, isn't it? When you're like, I'm not gonna make it.

Joe: That's where we are now. An old home in desperate need of someone to take care of the mouse problem.

Larry the Cat

Joe: Finally, we're on the topic of this episode. Larry the Cat. Kess had to step away. Hopefully she'll be able to rejoin before the end, but we will see. We are very grateful for her hanging out with us this evening, but the realities of us recording in the US and her recording in Europe is just a little bit tricky on time. So let me tell you about Larry. Larry was born in 2007, and we don't know anything about his early life, although it is assumed he was a stray on the streets of London. If we were to calculate silver spoons for him, we would either be giving him zero because he was a stray cat, or infinite because obviously cats are just naturally better than humans. He was found on the streets of London in January 2011 in, quote, "a bit of a state," according to the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home. A representative of the home told reporters that, quote, "When he came to us, he was quite poorly in a sense that he was very ragged, very cold, but had no signs of being ill-treated. He was obviously a stray for quite a long while before he came to us. He's quite a beauty now, though, isn't he?" Abram, let me show you this picture of Larry.

Abram: He looks very cute. I'm giving him some head scratches.

Joe: The Battersea Dogs and Cats Home is just south of Westminster, across the Thames, near Battersea Park, as you would probably expect. It's one of the oldest animal shelters in the world and was founded in 1860. Queen Victoria was an early patron, and Charles Dickens even wrote about it, so that's pretty awesome. Larry had an unremarkable time at the shelter, but this is where our Picture This takes place. On January 11th, 2011, a rat was seen in the background of a BBC broadcast. That was not the only rat sighting. There were other rat sightings outside Downing Street by other reporters over the following weeks, and the internet even took a shine to this rat. They named him Rufus the Rat, and they started a Twitter account for him.

Abram: That's funny. So was he ever seen again?

Joe: Well, before long, it was decided that something needed to be done to get rid of the powerful metaphor of rats in Downing Street, and that something was Larry the Cat. The Home Office sought a good mouser—

Abram: When did they last have a Chief Mouser?

Joe: Oh, the last one was Sybil, who was a cat. That was during the Gordon Brown prime ministership. Well, I mentioned her briefly. She was like the personal cat of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling. So she was there while Alistair was in office, but then left when he wasn't.

Abram: So she was the closest thing to a Chief Mouser during those years.

Joe: And in fact, Sybil only lasted for six months. She really didn't like living in the city and was taken back to the countryside. Humphrey was 1989 to 1997. And Sybil was 2007, uh, until 2009. But at least some of that time, I think she was actually in the countryside. The Home Office, they sought a good mouser from Battersea, and Larry was suggested as a good fit, both because he was very friendly and because he must have been a scrappy good mouser to have survived on the streets for so very long. Early news reports suggested that Larry might have been a personal pet for David Cameron's kids, but most of the news reports say that he was specifically acquired just to be the mouser. February 15th, 2011, Larry the Cat was officially brought into Downing Street and they began a media blitz. Downing Street spokespeople announced that Larry had, quote, "a high chase drive and hunting instinct," and, quote, "a very strong predatory drive" derived from his time on the streets. David Cameron said, quote, "I am delighted to welcome Larry to his new home. He came highly recommended to me by the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, who did a fantastic job looking after him. I am sure he will be a great addition to Downing Street and will charm our many visitors." That said, Larry's first day, very stressful. A couple news reporters picked him up, tried to talk about him on the news, and he scratched them. He was not really a social cat at this point, and how anybody thought that they could take a recently stray cat and— being held by a bunch of reporters after a very busy day, I think, really didn't understand cats. Almost immediately though, Larry was engulfed in scandal. There was the report that a woman named Margaret Sutcliffe, she claimed that Larry was her lost cat named "Jo," and that her cat had wandered away and was picked up by Battersea by mistake. Meaning that Larry was never a stray cat at all. A Facebook campaign was whipped up to demand that David Cameron return poor Ms. Sutcliffe's cat to them. However, this turned out to be a hoax. There's a guy named Chris Atkins. He directed a film called Starsuckers about the harms of celebrity culture in the UK. He used Larry's adoption as a way to stir the pot and to protest this sort of UK celebrity culture. Maybe coincidentally, maybe not, Mr. Atkins was later arrested for tax fraud and sentenced to five years in prison. This was later, but as in like the next year. That is what you get when you cross the nation's top cat.

Abram: It won't end well.

Joe: So even without Mr. Atkins, however, Larry's mousing skills were quickly called into question. An anonymous source claimed that he, quote, "has shown no interest in the many mice in Downing Street. There is a distinct lack of killer instinct." Well, how many mice do you think he caught in the next nine months?

Abram: Two.

Joe: Little higher.

Abram: Four.

Joe: Little lower.

Abram: Three.

Joe: Three. He was catching one mouse every three months. In fact, David Cameron, back in November, had to throw a fork at a mouse, missing it unfortunately, during a cabinet dinner, while Larry was napping somewhere else. Larry also began to spend time with Maisey, a cat that was owned by the St. James's Park keeper, who also was wandering freely around the neighborhood. And the press liked to report that maybe Larry was spending a little bit too much time with Maisey instead of doing his job. But with mice continuing to threaten Downing Street, it was time to do something unthinkable. Replace Larry.

Abram: How could you?

Competition as Chief Mouser

Joe: Larry may not have been a great mouser, but he was a great spokes-cat and mascot for the UK government. In 2012, Larry's credited as increasing the cat adoptions from Battersea by 15%, making rescue cats more fashionable in London. But it was clear that if they actually wanted to solve the mouse problem, they needed more cats. Catching one mouse every three months was not going to solve Downing Street's problems. So in June 2012, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne brought a cat into 11 Downing Street named Freya, and she was named as the co-Chief Mouser alongside Larry. If we had really done episodes, she would be twelve, but we didn't, so Larry we're saying is twelve, or we would have covered her already or something. But Freya was a co-Chief Mouser during Larry's term. And some people actually said that Larry had been fired. An article from The People magazine, a British tabloid, stated, quote, "The final straw came on Thursday when Mr. Cameron caught Larry catnapping on his chair in the Number 10 study as another mouse scurried across the room. When he tried to wake Larry to do his duty, one eye opened, but the moggy wouldn't budge." Rumors of Larry's firing were premature. He was not fired, but Freya was quickly demonstrated to be a much better mouser. But unfortunately, she loved wandering, and that was a bit dangerous. She had once wandered over a mile away from Downing Street and had to be rescued by a volunteer. Another time, she was struck by a car and needed to go to the vet to recuperate. And after only two years on the job, Osborne decided that it was best for Freya to live in the countryside where she could roam a bit more freely. In July 2015, after Freya had been sent away, George Osborne managed to corner a mouse in his office and trap the mouse in a paper bag. As the press reported that he was now more successful than Larry, some media reports claimed that George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, should be appointed as the new Chief Mouser. But as he was not a cat, he was not technically qualified for the role.

More Cats in Downing Street

Joe: Once again, without a competent mouser in Downing Street, more cats were brought into various departments to offset Larry's somewhat casual attitudes. In April 2016, they introduced one of Larry's greatest rivals, Palmerston. Who is he named for?

Abram: Henry John Temple.

Joe: Henry John Temple, the Viscount Palmerston and former Prime Minister. What years was he Prime Minister?

Abram: Paul?

Joe: You don't know? Man. Palmerston became a perpetual thorn in Larry's paw from his base of operations at the Foreign Office. And despite being confined to his own territory, Palmerston was known to sneak into Number 10 and to be escorted out by security. He and Larry were allowed to roam the grounds outside, and it gave them opportunities to become friends, or rather enemies. Larry and Palmerston fought a lot. In July 2016, Larry injured his paw in a battle with Palmerston and had to be assigned bed rest by the vet. Actually, Larry, bed rest? I don't even know if you would have noticed the difference.

Abram: Yep.

Joe: In another fight in August, Palmerston managed to tear off Larry's collar and was rewarded by deep scratches across Palmerston's body and ear. This wasn't just because Larry and Palmerston were antisocial, but it was also a very stressful time. David Cameron had just been replaced by Theresa May, and the change in family life in Number 10 was difficult for a cat to understand or deal with. That September, because of all these fights, Larry was brought up in the House of Lords when a lord asked who was paying for all of Larry's medical bills from all of his fights with Palmerston. That revealed that unlike all other British civil servants, Larry doesn't have government healthcare. Oh, the staff of Number 10 has to take donations to cover his vet bills. Palmerston eventually retired in August 2020, and Larry had won. As more prime ministers came and went, Larry always remained. He dealt with new pets coming in and out of his space, like Rishi Sunak's dog Nova, Keir Starmer's cats JoJo and Prince. Other cats had come and gone, like Gladstone at the Treasury, Evie and Ossie were in Number 10, might still be there, but I can't find any recent news about them. And that's where we are today. Larry remains for now the only Chief Mouser. The government has produced a plan for how to announce his death because he's seventeen, but that plan isn't public. He's not as spry as he used to be. He's probably catching even fewer mice than he used to.

Abram: I bet his total mouse count is like fifteen.

Joe: But I hope he lives for a long time yet. He has one accomplishment that I didn't mention.

Abram: What?

Joe: Actually, he has a couple. So Larry has books about him. There was a regular political cartoon series about Larry's time. But more importantly, a species of beetle native to India has been named for him. They are Caccothryptus larryi. And I was going to show you a picture of the beetle, but it's kind of a scary-looking beetle. But if you're ever in India and you happen to see a beetle, you might be seeing— probably not, but you might be seeing— a beetle named for Larry. So I want to end this episode with Larry's biography on the UK government website, which I think summarizes him very well. Quote, "Larry spends his days greeting guests to the house, inspecting security defences, and testing antique furniture for napping quality. His day-to-day responsibilities also include contemplating a solution to the mouse occupancy of the house, but Larry says that this is still in tactical planning stage."

And that's it for Larry the Cat. I hope you enjoyed. Abram, did you have fun?

Abram: Yes.

Joe: Are you ready to go back to talking about prime ministers?

Abram: Yes.

Joe: Excellent. I hope you all enjoyed our little April Fools' Day joke. Have a great day. Say goodbye, Abram.

Abram: Bye.

Bibliography

Joe: Before I begin, I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to Kess, who was such a good sport coming on and having an episode with Abram and I. We were really running this at the last minute. We didn't think she was going to be able to come. I had written the script without her, and then ten minutes before recording time, she emailed and said, "I'm free now." I'm so glad that we were able to make it work, at least for the first half of the episode. And I am so grateful to her and to the rest of the team at Prime Time. Please make sure to check out their podcast. If I haven't expressed how much I love it so much in our other episodes, let me say so again right now. The sources for this episode are a little bit less academic than usual, primarily consisting of volumes of old newspaper articles from BBC.co.uk and other online sources, as well as UK government websites. There are no good— well, no particularly good biographies of prime minister cats, and the ones that exist are partially fictionalized. So I did the best I could with the sources that I found, but I hope you enjoyed our little episode. We'll be back to reviewing prime ministers very, very soon.

Abram: Goodbye.

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