Learning from Palmerston, one of UK’s top diplocats

The evidence has always been there, even if the not-really-cat-people refuse to see it: The felines possess a rare gift of absolute self-possession. Macavity, the mystery cat in TS Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, evaded the law with insouciance; when logic failed, the Cheshire Cat dissolved into a grin. To this august tradition belonged Palmerston, “chief mouser” for Britain’s Foreign Office, who breathed his last in Bermuda this week. He leaves behind fewer rodents in the corridors of power but more mandarins mourning the loss of a beloved companion.

Adopted in 2016 from a rescue centre in London at the height of Brexit’s turmoil, Palmerston was only three at the time. A non-pedigreed feline, he came to cut a lean figure in the diplomatic headquarters in London’s King Charles Street, despatching rodents with an efficiency that eluded many a trade negotiator. He retired to the countryside during the Covid pandemic in 2020, an honourable discharge after having demonstrated that the only thing more reliable than an astute civil servant is a cat with a well-timed swipe. That he sometimes extended that swipe to his seasoned counterpart across town — Larry, who has outlasted several Prime Ministers at 10, Downing Street — was another matter.

Yet, it was not this occasional showdown or his tally of catches that secured Palmerston’s place in the public imagination. His real gift lay elsewhere. He understood the essential truth about strategic intervention: That sometimes it pays to sit still and let others tie themselves in knots before making a move. In that sense, Palmerston was aware of the gravitas of his role. In public life, as in fiction, it is often the cat who keeps the humans in order.