The British government has kept a cat on the payroll since 1929

On June 3, 1929, a Treasury official named A.E. Banham authorized the Office Keeper at 10 Downing Street "to spend 1d a day from petty cash towards the maintenance of an efficient cat." The job remains to this day. Britain's official resident cat now carries the title Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, and the current officeholder, Larry — a Battersea rescue picked out by David Cameron's family in 2011 after TV cameras caught rats running across the front steps of Number 10 — is the first cat to hold it officially. — Read the rest

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