Cats will be cats — even if it’s gladstone!

Clearly, Gladstone, the chief mouser of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer’s domain, had not been briefed that going missing could cause a purrlitical crisis when PM Theresa May is battening down the hatches due to Brexit turbulence. That is why Treasury staff — and government servants of all species — need to be properly vetted and trained before being thrust in the public eye, given the propensity for rumourmongering these days. What was a perfectly normal night out on the tiles for a red-blooded male unnecessarily turned into a citywide cat hunt as the government appeared to be in a state of cataplexy amid allegations that the key Treasury official had run off to Europe for better job prospects.

Gladstone sauntering back to work the next day, perfectly fine but famished, should have been expected. After all, the 19th-century PM and Chancellor he has been named after — William Ewart Gladstone — was known for his nocturnal jaunts around London in questionable company. Feline Gladstone should now weigh in on Scotland Yard’s controversial conclusion this week that the so-called Croydon Cat Killings of the past four years — as gory and explicable as the Whitechapel murders attributed to Jack the Ripper during the original Gladstone’s time — are not the work of any single felon but due to road accidents and scavenging foxes.