18. The Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office
Even those who express little fondness for cats acknowledge that keeping them as household pets is not strange. Employing one, however, could probably be considered a little odd. Since 1929 (the earliest year for which records have been released) the Office Keeper of 10 Downing Street has been authorized to draw funds from petty cash “towards the maintenance of an efficient cat”. Known to the public and the press as Chief Mouser, cats have been used for the purpose of rodent control at the heart of the British government since the reign of Henry VIII, though there have been many periods where the office has been unfilled by as resident feline.
Other branches of the British government have kept cats for the purpose of rodent control, including the Post Office, where over time the rate of their compensation has been debated in the House of Commons, as recently as 1953. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office employed a cat by the name of Palmerston in April 2016, and the press reported the cat’s first success at catching a mouse the following month. The cats employed by the British government are compensated at a rate established by law, and the most recent estimate of the amount spent annually to retain their services is approximately one hundred pounds per cat per year. In the United States, the use of professional exterminators is preferred.
Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“Grizzly Bears”. Article, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Online
“Josephine, the Empress and her Children”. Nina Epton. 1975
“Josephine: The Hungry Heart”. Jean-Claude Baker. 1993
“Nerval: A Man and his Lobster”. Scott Hortin, Harper’s Magazine. October 2008
“The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali”. Ian Gibson. 1998
“Who was Peter the Wild Boy?” Megan Lane, BBC News Magazine. August 8, 2011
“Mozart’s Starling”. Meredith J. West and Andrew King, American Scientist. March/April 1990
“Ivan the Terrible”. Francis Carr. 1997
“Tycho Brahe: a picture of scientific life and work in the sixteenth century”. J. L. Dreyer. 1890
“The Pope’s Elephant”. Silvio A. Bedini. 1997
“The World Crisis Volume 4: The Aftermath 1918-1928”. Winston S. Churchill. 1929
“The Roosevelt Pets”. Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace, National Historic Site. Online