
Cats, politics, and digital diplomacy
Why does a digital diplomacy blog write about cats?
Cats have become a permanent fixture of the Internet. BuzzFeed made them viral — and made cat ladies cool. Think about Grumpy Cat or Lil Bub, they are celebrities in their own right, like Beyoncé and Justin Bieber. Grumpy Cat alone counts more than 12 million followers between Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Believe it or not, cats have also been part of politics and diplomacy.
I remember a few years ago going to the White House for a field trip of the Stockholm Initiative for Digital Diplomacy (SIDD), an informal group of digital practitioners focusing on foreign policy and public diplomacy, and meeting the White House’s digital strategy team.
The meeting occurred a couple of weeks after First Lady Michelle Obama appeared on the Lil Bub’s Big Show to celebrate the fifth anniversary of her Let’s Move initiative and talk about the #GimmeFive challenge — five ways to inspire kids to get moving. The episode has almost 1 million views between Youtube and Facebook.
“Celebrities like Beyonce, Conan O’ Brien, Jimmy Fallon, Jessica Alba, Ellen DeGeneres and many more have already accepted the challenge,” read a White House blog post. “Today, American’s favorite cat, Lil Bub decided to join in on all the #GimmeFive fun too.”
While the Obamas were known for their two dogs — Bo and Sunny — many cats have called the White House home in its 200 year history.
Back in 2011, a White House blog listed some of the most famous pets who resided at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, including the Clinton’s cat Socks, and Jimmy Carter’s Siamese cat Misty Malarky Ying Yang.


WHITE HOUSE CATS BEFORE SOCIAL MEDIA
Socks was probably the most photographed cat at the White House and in 1993, way before the advent of social media, became the protagonist of a cartoon book titled Socks Goes to Washington: The Diary of America’s First Cat, written by Michael O’Donoghue and Jean-Claude Suares. A few years later, in 1998, First Lady Hillary Clinton published her own children book titled Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids’ Letters to the First Pets which included more than 50 letters written to the Clintons First Pets by children and more than 80 photographs of Socks and Buddy.



And Socks was probably the first presidential cat in the world to have a presence on the web.
In his announcement of the Next Generation Internet Initiative in October 1996, President Bill Clinton said: “When I took office, only high energy physicists had ever heard of what is called the World Wide Web. When I took office, January of ’93, only high-energy physicists had heard of it. Now even my cat has its own page.”
A few weeks earlier, in September, while visiting Portland, Oregon, President Clinton said: “We want to use technology to open Government to people more. Today I want to announce that the White House home page, which many of you have already used on the Internet — see that sign “Portland wants Socks” — even my cat has a place on our home page. Now we are going to make it a one-stop gateway to Government service.”
INTERNATIONAL AND BILATERAL SUMMITS
In November 2015, the British daily The Independent titled: “Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin upstaged by three cats at G20 Summit in Turkey.” The article referred to footage shared on social media by reporters of the three cats running across the main stage at the G20 Antalya Summit in Turkey.
But those three cats were not the first to have ever appeared at international summits, state visits, or bilateral meetings.

In July 2009, during a trip to the Russian presidential residence in Gorki, right outside Moscow, for a meeting with then-president Dmitry Medvedev, Barack and Michelle Obama and First Daughters Malia and Sasha met Dorofei, Medvedev’s cat.
Years later, in 2012, Dorofei became the protagonist of an international conspiracy theory over news reports that it had run away.
“Medvedev, attending a summit in India, tweeted […] that the fluffy feline named Dorofei wasn’t missing after all,” the Associated Press reported. “But by then it was too late to stem a deluge of catty remarks on Twitter, where the pet was a top Russian topic.”
He wrote on Twitter: Dorofei had never gone missing. Thank you for your concern.
10 DOWNING STREET
Doroferi was not the only presidential cat that Barack Obama met in his official trips. He has also met with Larry, Chief Mouser of Downing Street, during a meeting with then-Prime Minister David Cameron.

Like Dorofei, Larry became part of a conspiracy over rumors it was going to be ‘evicted’ with new Prime Minister Theresa May.
“The furry feline has been a familiar face on the steps outside Number 10’s black door since he moved in, in 2011,” wrote the BBC. “And the ‘chief mouser’ will stay when Theresa May replaces Mr Cameron as UK prime minister.”
BBC cited a government spokesperson as saying: “It’s a civil servant’s cat and does not belong to the Camerons — he will be staying.”
There were also rumors that Cameron didn’t like Larry, becoming the first cat to be mentioned during a Q&A in the UK Parliament. The Telegraph reported: “Prime Minister responded to claims that his affection for Larry was ‘a lie, an exercise in spin and branding’ by insisting that he loves Larry and has ‘the photographic evidence to prove it’.”
Cameron later tweeted a photo with Larry as “proof.”
Larry is quite a digital diplomacy fixture with his own — and very popular — Twitter account @Number10cat with almost 140,000 followers.
CATS IN POLITICS AND DIPLOMACY
Larry is not the only political cat in the UK. The Foreign Office has its own “Chief Mouser.”
In the summer of 2016, Sir Simon McDonald, Permanent Under-Secretary of UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, re-tweeted a video of Larry with Palmerston, the new resident of Foreign Office headquarters.
Like its ‘colleague’ Larry, Palmerston has its own Twitter account @DiploMog, with over 52,000 followers — as well as an unofficial one: @PalmerstonFOCat with almost 15,000 followers.
And it was quite a star during Sir Simon McDonald’s first Q&A on Twitter.
It appears that London has quite an affection for political and diplomatic cats. Meet “Embassy Cat,” the official resident of the Ecuadorian Embassy in the British capital which became famous thanks to Julian Assange, founder of the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
Embassy Cat has his own Twitter account too: @EmbassyCat.
On the other side of the Atlantic, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was a big cat lover and often talked about his love for cats on his social media.
His cat Stanley was even named by the Prime Minister’s followers and fans.
In South America, the United Nations Mission in Colombia, established last year after the agreement between the Government and the FARC-EP, has its own resident cat, Pablito.
Back in 2008, before social media, Japan reportedly enlisted Doraemon, a popular cat cartoon character, as “animation ambassador” to deepen people’s understanding of Japan.

“A robotic cat with magical powers has been enlisted by Japan’s diplomatic corps to promote the country’s popular culture overseas,” reported The Guardian. “Having built huge following in Japan following his comic book debut in 1969, he [Doraemon] has become instantly recognizable throughout East Asia: in 2002, Time magazine named him one of 22 Asian heroes.”
AMBASSADORS TOO ARE FOND OF CATS
For #InternationalCatDay this year, Ambassador Euripides Evriviades, High Commissioner of Cyprus to the United Kingdom, tweeted about the “oldest known pet cat.”
Back in June he tweeted about “Mouser in Chief” Larry.
And in November 2016, Ambassador Evriviades tweeted about spotting Palmerston during a meeting at the FCO. His tweet got 200 retweets and almost 1,000 likes.
“It shows what people like,” Evriviades commented to me. “Cats have more followers than many of us!”
Last year, the US Embassy in London tweeted about Scooter, the world’s oldest cat.
The year before they Instagrammed their meeting with Larry at 10 Downing Street.
And back in 2013, Ambassador Muhamed Sacirbey, former permanent representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the United Nations, posted a eulogy for his cat Tatou on his blog on the Huffington Post.
This post is part of a series on social media for diplomats:
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