These Cats Are Basically Royalty

It's a tail as old as time. You're in the right place at the right moment and the next thing you know, you're living in the White House. That's what happened to a stray, gray, green-eyed cat named Willow, who turned up at a Joe Biden rally in Pennsylvania in 2020, jumped onstage and left with soon-to-be first lady Jill Biden, who later wrote a book about her. Plenty of other four-pawed wonders have landed on their padded feet in famous and fortuitous places, reports the AP.

London's feline royalty

• Lilibet is a Siberian Forest cat who spends one of her nine lives snoozing by the fire at the five-star Lanesborough Hotel in London. Plenty of people check in just to check out the resident cat, named after Queen Elizabeth II.
• Hodge sits inside the sacristy at Southwark Cathedral, founded in 1106 on the south bank of the Thames River. He roams around delighting visitors and popping into the shop for treats.
• Larry, the famous cat of 10 Downing St., has outlasted most prime ministers—Kier Starmer is his sixth. Employed as Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, Larry pays his way by keeping the official office and residence of the PM more cat than mouse.

Elsewhere around the world

• Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. About 80 cats get to call Catherine the Great's Baroque palace home in return for keeping the pest population down. They have their own press officer and volunteer staff.
• The Hemingway Homes and Museum, in Key West, Florida. Fifty-nine cats roam freely, half of them descendants of Hemingway's own six-toed cat, Snow White. The animals lounge on the writer's desk.
• In Puerto Rico's Cuartel de Ballajá one Tuesday, a cat arrived at the Don Ruiz Coffee Shop in San Juan. She spent her time napping and permitting patrons to pet her (when in the mood). They named her Tuesday, and she became a regular.
• In Pristina, Kosovo, Lule is so beloved at the Dit' e Nat (Day and Night) bar that her face has become its symbol. Owner Genc Salihu says people turn up just to pet Lule. "She is very much the soul of the place."

(More cats stories.)