The Cats of Downing Street

Or should we say Meow-ning Street?

Today British Pathe paid a visit to 10 Downing Street! (apparently nothing to do with David Cameron’s recent history quiz on Letterman?!) We’re proud to have a wealth of footage in our archive of the iconic Number 10 building and British Pathe filmed some of the most momentous events to have happened there over the last 100 years.

We posted a photo of our staff member John outside the famous black door onto our Twitter page earlier today. But we also managed to take this snap, a photo of the resident cat “Larry” sitting on the windowsill just behind the front door:

Larry, the current mouser at Downing Street.

Cats have long been in place at Downing Street, sitting in and purring throughout important political discussions, brushing ankles with royalty. In the 1990s John Major’s cat Humphrey became a bit of a celebrity:

A police officer strokes Humphrey

Humphrey entered the premises during Thatcher’s time in office. She allegedly made the decision to keep Humphreys, claiming that £100 spent on cat food was better than £4000 spent on a pest control contractor who’d never managed to catch anything. He regularly featured in the tabloid press and even had his own picture book published by HarperCollins in 1995.

The first Downing Street cat to appear in our archive, to our knowledge, is this one in 1940:

A superstitious symbol just seconds before Anthony Eden met with Lord Halifax.

This still image is taken from the British Pathe video “War Cabinet” in which Eden meets Lord Halifax for a critical discussion.

Then we came across this cat sitting on the lap of Harold Wilson’s son at 10 Downing Street:

Clearly Harold’s son hadn’t yet learnt the rule of not looking directly into the lens.

We wanted to find the mouser of Downing Street during Churchill’s time at the top. We’re sure there’ll be a glimpse of cat in one of our Churchill reels. In the meantime we found this pussy who greeted Churchill when he visited Roosevelt in the states in 1940:

Roosevelt’s cat in 1940

The American cats seem to be a more acerbic breed than the more casual and leisurely Downing Street creatures.

Please do help us to find more Downing Street cats in our archive. You can get off to a head start and dive straight into our Downing Street videos by clicking here:

http://www.britishpathe.com/search/query/downing+street

Let us know if spot one! And you can share your findings with us either by leaving a comment below, talking to us on our Facebook page, or tweeting us @britishpathe