ninme

So, this started as a cute little notebook piece on cats in No. 10 through the 20th century, next thing you know I really am in tears:

Telegraph - The claws are out again in Number 10. By Andrew Pierce

Only a cat. I am quite sure it’s what some people say behind my back about my cat Winnie who, aged 19, has been given only a few weeks to live by the vet.

She came into my life in October 1988, 12 months before the Berlin Wall came down, and two years before the fall of Margaret Thatcher. What a different world we both live in today.

I named her after Winnie Mandela, who was then the Mother of the Nation in South Africa in the fight against apartheid rather than a suspect in the murder of a 14-year-old boy.

But then my Winnie is no stranger to killing.

How she purred with pride when she deposited, on the carpet of course and usually at meal times, the bloodied feathered trophy from her latest hunting expedition.

Dogs or cats who had the temerity to trespass into her garden were swiftly dispatched. How she protected me, my big-hearted little cat. Her valour even extended to confronting, when aged 15, a bushy tailed young fox who had taken up residence in the garden. The encounter ended, mercifully, when I launched a well-directed broom handle in the direction of the intruder.

Winnie, a Heinz 57, moved in after I heard from a neighbour that two kittens had been rescued from a rubbish chute in a north London tower block. They couldn’t have been more than five weeks old. They were so tiny they both snuggled into the palm of one hand. I became even more devoted to Winnie after her sister Florrie was run over by a car 10 years ago. The shock of Florrie’s violent death was hard.

The pain of watching Winnie die slowly, even though she is in no pain or on any medication, is far worse. I live alone so perhaps I invest more in my little friend than people who don’t.

Now, all I can do is make her last days and weeks comfortable. So a favourite jumper, bought for me by my former partner who was with me when the wonderful Winnie came into my life, has become her favourite resting place. Naturally, it’s in the middle of my bed requiring the most extraordinary body contortions to enable me to sleep at night. But how I shall miss the reassuring vibrations of her purring by my side when she is gone.

Friends have been kind as they understand my bond with this headstrong little lady. Ann Widdecombe, who also recently lost a cat, sent me this message when I told her Winnie was dying. “I shall weep for Winnie - and for you, knowing just what it feels like. Spoil her rotten during whatever time you have left but don’t keep her going when she is ready for the Great Pussy Heaven, where the armchairs are divine and angels feed all good moggies lots of fish.” I am following her advice.

See what I mean?

The Telegraph - Nine more lives at No 10

There’s a cat again at No 10 (and No 11) Downing Street, a decade after the banishment of Humphrey by Cherie Blair - no cat-lover she.

Indeed Mrs Blair, in an attempt not to appear heartless, posed with the poor creature grasped unhappily in her arms. He died in exile last year.

Now Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, who shares Humphrey’s black-and-white markings, has distanced the Brown regime from the Blair anti-cat terror by installing Sybil.

Sybil is an odd choice for a cat’s name. The ancient Roman Sybil predicted a golden age, one day, no one knew quite when.

She wrote her prophecies on leaves that were blown into a muddle by the wind, like so many spending forecasts.

She lived 1,000 years - say 5,000 cat-years. So our Sybil might see a Tory prime minister again.

Hee.

Telegraph - Sybil the cat sets up home in Number 10

First Gordon Brown and the family settled in - amid a blaze of publicity - back in June. Now, quietly and away from the cameras, Sybil has joined them at Number Ten.

Downing Street has officially announced that the nation not only has a new Prime Minister with new ideas about how to govern, but it also has a new First Cat.

Sybil, a black and white creature that belongs to Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, is the first cat to reside at Number Ten for a decade.

Those terrible Blair years are behind us!

A spokesman for Mr Brown explained: “Mr and Mrs Darling are living in the flat above No 10. I understand they do have a cat and the cat has recently been brought to Downing Street.”

(Hang on, there’s a flat above No 10?) (Honestly I thought “11 Downing Street” was adjacent, not above, No 10.)