> At a cost of about £100 a year (paid for from the Cabinet Office's budget), most of which went towards food, Humphrey was said to be of considerably better value than the Cabinet's professional pest controller, who charged £4,000 a year and is reported to have never caught a mouse.[3]
Of course, as a civil servant, the Chief Mouser is expected to implement government policy impartially.
Reassuring to see none of them were intentionally killed and only Peter II passed due to an accident.
Where I live its exceedingly rare to have an outdoor cat that lives past 10. And they are not even related to unpopular public figures...
> Humphrey was found as a stray by a Cabinet Office civil servant and named in honour of Humphrey Appleby, the archetypal civil servant of Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.
Love it. Thatcher was famously a big fan of "Yes Minister"
Wonderfully, the official government webpage[1] lists his duties as:
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. Larry says this is still ‘in tactical planning stage’.
[1]
https://www.gov.uk/government/history/10-downing-street#larr...Putting the "Larry with Boris Johnson in 2019" photo under the heading of "Relationships with other animals" is hilarious, intentional or not.
Boris the animal?
It's just Boris!
Trying to get a pigeon. It escaped.
Yep, he got it pretty good but clipped claws probably saved the bird. Or he was doing it for sport.
> the first one to be given the official title of chief mouser by the British government was Larry in 2011
That's the difference between the cabinet office and No 10.
> David Cameron has said that Larry is a "bit nervous" around men, speculating that, since Larry was a rescue cat, this may be due to negative experiences in his past. Cameron mentioned that Barack Obama is an apparent exception to this fear: he said, "Funnily enough he liked Obama. Obama gave him a stroke and he was all right with Obama."
> In September 2013 tensions were reportedly growing between Cameron and Larry....
The entire Relationship with other politicians section is a hilarious read.
> ... opinion poll from Ipsos showed that Larry had a higher favourability rating (44%) and net favourability rating (40%) than both Sunak (22% and –36%) and Starmer (34% and –7%).
Larry might be the only one who can beat Farage at this point.
If you're in the UK you know exactly who this is without having to click the link
I was hoping that I wasn't getting my news from HN for a moment there.
I wonder which bridge it will be
I always find it incredibly sweet and endearing whenever humans write / document things like this. It's almost like a definition or example of what humanity means.. creatures with brainpower - a organ that's the most complex (and power efficient!) thing in the known universe.
I can't believe how long this Wikipedia article is and complete with sources! Like, it's just a cat! I'm surprised the notoriety police haven't swooped in.
It’s been written about by so many reputable sources that it clearly meets Wikipedia’s peculiar definition of notoriety, whether or not it meets other more normal definitions.
> Larry has lived at 10 Downing Street during the premierships of six prime ministers
Six! The troublesome times this cat has witnessed from close by...
18 years old is getting up there for a cat! He should start training an apprentice.
This just seems so quintessentially British, it made me smile. I bet Larry has seen some things in his time.
The Wikipedia article is obviously in error. It’s clear to me that the government serves Larry and at his convenience.
You are correct. As anyone who has lived with a cat knows, you do not own the cat, the cat owns you.
Dogs have owners. Cats have staff.
One of my cousins said the following things which is also kinda like what you said haha
When we feed a dog, it thinks that we (humans) are the god, but then when we feed a cat food, it thinks that I(cats) are the god.
And to be really honest, in ancient egpyt or something, cats were really considered close to god (IMO?) and I remember a incidence where people would wrap cats around their shields when battling since both sides didn't want to kill cats.
Pratchett, characterising cats, said: "In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods. They have not forgotten this."
The Persian conquest of Egypt under Cambyses. Battle of Pelusium, precisely.
>Cambyses captured Pelusium by using a clever strategy. The Egyptians regarded certain animals, especially cats, as being sacred (they had a cat goddess named Bastet), and would not injure them on any account. Polyaenus claims that Cambyses had his men carry the "sacred" animals in front of them to the attack. The Egyptians did not dare to shoot their arrows for fear of wounding the animals, and so Pelusium was stormed successfully.
That would certainly be an improvement over the monarchy.
Why is this on HN?
Oh right because it's "interesting".
That's ~120 second of life spent reading minutiae (plus 15 sec writing this). And wasting random reader's time at scale.
This is uniquely British.
His twitter account is well known for its cat-like snark.
From stray cat to Chief Mouser - nice career.
Is there really such a mice problem at Downing street that people catch mice during dinner?
Bear in mind that it's of Georgian construction and Grade 1 listed (so not just a façade), so there is presumably plenty of wood and plaster in its construction with corresponding voids. With humans comes food morsels. Some of the rooms offer doors onto the garden. Mice seem inevitable in those circumstances.
I think that if that is the case, then we might need a "tiny" more security if unsupervised rats could enter into their premise. It just feels kinda weird thinking how we have a country with nuclear power and yet the building where its highest ranking elected official / basically one of the most important buildings where they live can be infected with the tiny rat.
It almost feels poetic. They have the power to bend apple's arm in secret courts and doors to literally backdoor every/(billions?) of apple devices to mass control and yet a tiny rat can escape and enter their most prestigious building where such earlier decisions are made.
I am not sure why but it definitely gives me some david vs goliath the way I am picturing it.
I am not sure if this is such an unsolvable problem given I am pretty sure that there are definitely CCTV's everywhere with people surveilling over them 24x7 right?
If you're thinking of the 5th Element remote-controlled cockroach attack vector ... I think you're over-estimating what's feasible at the moment (even in a mouse sized package).
Probably not too far off though.
There's a mouse problem in the whole city. But then there's a mouse/rat problem in more or less any city of similar population density.
Yes, Number 10 Downing Street is three eighteenth-century houses joined together. When cleaning dirt from the industrial revolution off the building's facade, it was discovered that the bricks underneath were actually yellow, but it was soon painted black because people were so used to seeing it that way on TV.
More generally, Britain and its former empire are and always were governed strictly on a least-effort, least-cost basis. There is a lot of wealth and splendour in this country, but it's privately owned; the public realm is rather run down.
It's kind of unavoidable with those sorts of buildings. Amsterdam (and similar places) get it even worse - all those waterways with buildings of a similar age mean that it's a haven for mice.
British politicians are notorious sloppy eaters, lots of crumbs to be had.
> Within a month of his arrival at Downing Street, anonymous sources described Larry as having "a distinct lack of killer instinct."[11] Later that year, it was revealed that Larry spent more time sleeping than hunting for mice, and shared the company of a female cat, Maisie.[12] At one point in 2011, mice were so endemic in Downing Street that the Prime Minister, David Cameron, resorted to throwing a fork at one during a Cabinet dinner.[12]
Not to speak well of Britain's current leadership, nor ill of the theory behind it - but they need to split the Chief Mouser office into a symbolic head of state, and an actual working leader. Perhaps "His Meowjesty", and a "Prime Mouser"?
For extra fun - pay for their upkeep via "gifts" from members of the press, who hope to receive juicy leaks and preferential access (both only relating to the cats) in return.
A good reminder that culture can be beautiful.
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