Humphrey Dies Leaving Britain’s Top Officials Unprotected

In the never-ending fight between dog-people and cat-people, the Kensington Review is definitely pro-canine. All the same, there are some felines worthy of one’s respect. Last week, the British government announced that Humphrey the Cat-in-Residence at The Cabinet Office had died, aged about 18. The nation mourns.

Humphrey wandered into the Cabinet Office in 1989, while Margaret Thatcher was PM, and he survived the Tory Afternoon of Short Sporks that got rid of her. He outlasted her successor, John Major who was turfed out by an electorate that had had enough. However, when Mr. Blair and his wife arrived, Humphrey vanished, prompting questions in the House of Commons (really, if this were in a novel, the publisher would reject it for being unrealistic). When the cat and cat-loather Mrs. Blair held a joint news conference, they announced his retirement from public service. He lived out his retirement in the home of a Cabinet Office civil servant.

During his time in Downing Street, Cabinet Office papers show that Humphrey (who was named after Sir Humphrey Appleby in the TV series “Yes, Minister”) “caught numerous mice and the odd rat., [the punctuation as in the original] especially in his early days. It is thought that at least some of these may have been caught outside the building and brought in though. By a perhaps unfair comparison, Rentokil [a UK extermination service] have been operating in 70 Whitehall [which is beside 10 Downing Street] many years and have never caught anything. Their service for 70 Whitehall alone costs the department about £4,000 a year at current rates.” The £100 a year the government spent on his cat food was part of the Budget.

Of course, no one who lives and works in Downing Street can avoid scandal. Humphrey was accused at one stage of killing four baby robins not far from the PM’s office by the Daily Telegraph’s “Peterborough” column. The Whitehall PR machine wrote this about his acquittal, “This was a libellous [sic] allegation and was completely unfounded. This was at a time when Humphrey, a gentle-natured cat, had been ill with kidney trouble and sleeping for most of the day. He could not have caught anything even if it had been roast duck with orange sauce, presented on a plate.”

The lack of information about his personal life may lead some to suggest he had something to hide, that he was forced out of his place. That appears to be the speculation of a cynical press. Unable to defend himself because cats lack the ability speak and as a civil servant he was legally unable to discuss his work, one must look to the official record. His file says, “He is a workaholic who spends nearly all his time at the office, has no criminal record, does not socialise a great deal or go to many parties and has not been involved in any sex or drug scandals that we know of.” One would gladly stack that record of service up against that of anyone in the British government since 1066.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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