He has the run of the UK Foreign Office and no one is sure where he was born. But Palmerston the cat is “definitely not” a spy, according to Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, who faced questions this week as to whether the mouser in residence is a secret mole working for foreign powers.
The media is having some fun with this kerfuffle. “No, but in all seriousness I promise I’m not making this up,” quipped one writer for thechive.com. “The Foreign Secretary Has Been Forced to Deny That Chief Mouser Palmerston Is A Spy” was the headline that ran in the Independent online. The Chive story went on to make this report: “According to the parliamentary records an MP asked the following: ‘Has Palmerston been positively vetted by the security service and scanned for bugs by GCHQ? Can you assure the House, and the more paranoid element of the Brexiters, of Palmerston’s British provenance and that he is not a long-term mole working for the EU Commission?'”
To which Hammond replied: “He is definitely not a mole and I can categorically assure you that he has been regularly vetted. As for being a sleeper, he is definitely a sleeper, I am told very often in my office.”
In reality, Palmerston’s story appears as black and white as the Tuxedo cat himself. He was adopted from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in April and brought to the Foreign Office to act as chief mouser. He was found on the streets without a microchip to identify him, and was chosen for his post because he gets along well with people, according to a report on TRT World. So far, he has managed to catch three mice.
