Gladstone

Gladstone is the resident cat — and official mouser — of HM Treasury, the United Kingdom's economics and finance ministry in Whitehall. A black-and-white rescue cat, he was rehomed from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home in 2016 to deal with a mouse problem in the historic government building, and quickly became a Whitehall celebrity in his own right. He is named after William Ewart Gladstone, the Victorian statesman who served four times as Chancellor of the Exchequer and four times as Prime Minister — a fitting namesake for a cat employed at the nation's finance department. Gladstone joined a small but famous club of British government cats that includes Larry at 10 Downing Street and Palmerston at the Foreign Office, and like them he has his own social-media following, where Treasury staff share photographs of him patrolling corridors, sitting in on (or sleeping through) the business of government, and generally embodying the long tradition of working cats in the civil service. Beyond the publicity, he plays a genuine role in keeping the Grade I-listed building free of rodents.