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It’s the old story: you’re in the right place at the right time and suddenly you find yourself living in the White House.
That’s what happened to Willow, a gray, green-eyed stray cat who showed up to a Joe Biden rally in Pennsylvania in 2020, jumped onstage and walked away with the soon-to-be first lady, Jill, who later wrote a book about him.
Many other four-legged wonders have landed with their paw-padded feet at famous and lucky spots.
And it works both ways: Cats add value to the places they live in, whether that’s by simply adding cuteness or by eliminating mice. Sometimes, they even come to define the place.
London’s feline royalty
Take Lilibet, for example.
She’s a Siberian forest cat who spends one of her nine lives stretching her toes and snoozing by the fireplace at London’s five-star Lanesborough Hotel. Many people check in just to see the pet, named after Queen Elizabeth, says managing director Stuart Geddes.
Lilibet, who has hypoallergenic fur, is not the only cat living in Britain’s grand building.
Hodge sits in the sacristy of Southwark Cathedral, which was built in 1106 on the south bank of the River Thames, and he wanders around entertaining visitors and stopping off at a shop for sweets, where fans can also buy a stuffed toy version of him.
Not far away, across the Thames, 10 Downing Street has its famous cat, Larry, who has been there longer than most prime ministers. Keir Starmer is the sixth.
Employed as chief mouser in the Cabinet Office, Mr Lally makes a living by keeping Downing Street and the official residence more cat-like than mouse-like. He has outlasted his rival Mr Palmerston, a former Foreign Office wimp who retired to the English countryside in 2020.
Preserved with care in a museum
A similar situation exists at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.
In return for keeping the pest population down, around 80 cats have been given the opportunity to call Catherine the Great’s Baroque palace home. The cats have their own publicist and staff of volunteers who promote, feed and water the cats as they roam the Russian State Museum.
The Hemingway Homes and Museum in Key West, Florida, is one of the museums that welcomes a feline population, with 59 cats roaming freely on the grounds, half of them descendants of Hemingway’s six-toed cat, Snow White.
Visitors are kept away from the original furniture, but the animals make themselves at home on the author’s desk, and a large “Cat Bible” helps visitors trace the genealogy of the resident felines.
Alexa Morgan of the Hemingway Museum said those are added attractions.
“Customers who come here for Hemingway see the cats, fall in love with them, and come back to see them again,” she says.
Meowing Mascot
And then there are mixed breed cats that don’t have an impressive pedigree or breed.
One Tuesday, a cat arrived at the Don Luis Coffee Shop in San Juan, Cuartel de Baraja, Puerto Rico. The cat spent the day napping and (when he felt like it) allowing customers to pet him. The customers named the cat Tuesday and became regular customers.
In Venezuela, under the banner of Hugo Chavez, the nameless cat has become well known among journalists in Caracas. Often found wandering among the tripods of the National Electoral Commission’s television crew, the mysterious animal keeps reporters company as they wait for updates, occasionally playing with the audio cables and strutting around as if he’s in charge of the place.
Meanwhile, at Dite Nat (Day and Night) bar in Pristina, Kosovo, Lule is so beloved that his face has become the bar’s symbol and is even featured on sugar packets. Owner Cenk Salih says Lule is a member of the family and people come just to see and pet him.
“She’s really the soul of this place.”
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Adam Egan in London, Kirill Zarubin in St. Petersburg, Frida Frisaro in Florida, Florent Bajrami in Pristina, Alejandro Granadillo in San Juan and Juan Araez in Caracas contributed to this report.