It was a rat scurrying across the Number 10 doorstep during a BBC News broadcast that finally tipped the balance for those behind the famous black door – it was time to get a cat.
The idea of getting a cat had already been mooted, despite concerns that it wasn’t fair or indeed possible to get the taxpayer to pay for one. That debate rumbled on for a while. Then came the BBC broadcast. ‘We slightly bounced the anti-cat faction into it’, reflects Liz Sugg, a senior Downing Street aide at the time. She had ‘spoken to the Prime Minister about it and he gave his blessing. So we went off to Battersea and I was hoping that we’d get a cute little kitten’. But Battersea staff explained to Sugg and her group that the kitten they had in mind might not fit in with the workings of Downing Street. The cat’s welfare was, obviously, Battersea’s priority.
Sugg explained the set-up of Downing Street, how the door opens and closes, the number of people who come through it, the number of events and state visits and dinners and the working environment. So they said, ‘Our recommendation is that you get a cat who knows his stuff and is a bit streetwise and isn’t going to be scared, because the last thing we want is for the cat to be unhappy there’. And then Larry walked up to us. He came up and pushed his nose against my leg, so I gave him a little stroke. And all of us who were there fell in love with him.
From Wandsworth to Whitehall
Larry had been found on the streets of Wandsworth in south London. He was a young cat, somewhere between three and five years old. But his stay in Battersea was to be a brief one, having been rescued just a few weeks before Sugg and her group made Larry their instant choice. ‘We were keen to get a rescue cat. And obviously they [the press] were very excited about it’.
In a press release at that time, Battersea called Larry ‘a great match [for Downing Street], because he is a very sociable cat who enjoys attention and loves human contact. He was also, they said, ‘a bit of a bruiser’.
‘He just moved in and made himself at home,’ says Sugg. ‘He found his favourite little seat inside on the windowsill by the front door, because it’s directly above a radiator’.
Accidental Global Celebrity
From day one, the media had a huge interest in Larry, and he took all the attention largely in his stride, with the exception of scratching a female reporter, who had attempted to pick him up while he struggled to break free of her arms and got scratched as a result. Within hours, Larry was a global celebrity, with photos and videos of him flying around the world. Twitter accounts were set up, too, all claiming to be the cat’s official account.
‘The public loved Larry,’ Sugg recalls. ‘We got all sorts of presents sent in. I remember a blanket with Larry’s name on it. We put that on the windowsill and it became his favourite blanket’.
When the PM’s daughter Florence was born, very early into his premiership, there was a lovely reaction. Lots of people sent in crochet blankets and little presents for her, but I think we had more gifts for Larry than for the Prime Minister’s daughter!
