A Cathedral cat & opinion of the masses

I first made the acquaintance of Hodge, the resident feline of Southwark Cathedral, on a sweltering London afternoon last month. My sated family and I had just staggered out of Mallow, a Bankside vegan gem, when we found ourselves drawn to the city's oldest Gothic house of prayer.

We made our way through the former Augustinian priory and found ourselves facing the retrochoir, which comprised four pretty chapels. Next to it, Hodge had taken refuge in an alcove and was reclining languidly. He flexed his left paw several times, encouraging me, or so I thought, to take cognisance of the notice board next to him, soliciting something or other on behalf of the cathedral-affiliated school of St Saviour and St Mary Overie.

Two Latin words, 'sapere aude' - dare to know - caught my attention. As I stepped up to take a closer look, Hodge abandoned the pose of a disinterested odalisque and, swishing his tail impatiently, invited me to follow him.


He stopped near a stand dispensing flyers on the history of the edifice. Picking one up, I learnt that the retrochoir had been used during Queen Mary's Counter-Reformation to try several Protestant prelates before despatching them for execution. Upon returning the brochure to its rack, I discovered that Hodge had disappeared.

Suddenly, a soft voice behind me said, 'Gruesome, isn't it?' I spun around, half expecting to find Hodge in human form. Instead, I encountered a chaplain. 'And, contrary to what that pamphlet conceals, it wasn't just Catholics that used this place as a kangaroo court. We Protestants were no better. In fact, we were the pioneering perpetrators.' Before I could thank him for his insight, he entered the inner recesses of the church.

Once our tour was complete, we rested for a few minutes on a bench in the herb garden outside. I looked at my phone. One post had made the rounds on social media fast and furiously. It contained a colourised photograph purportedly taken in 1903, depicting a woman - variously described as Lepcha and Bengali--being used as a beast of burden in Sikkim by a British officer, who was straddling her at an angle that defied the laws of physics. It, understandably, engendered much righteous indignation.

A little research proved this to be an AI-generated image, the inspiration for which was a photograph taken in French Indochina at the turn of the 20th c. , capturing a colonial official sitting in reverse on a woman's back, ostensibly prior to being taken for a ride.

When I shared this information with friends and acquaintances, I was met with censure and ridicule. When I countered with the fact that even if the image were a true historical artefact, use of humans as sumpter coolies was an old and extant tradition in many parts of Asia, where no other form of assisted travel was possible, I was branded an apologist for colonial rule.

'But many Indians have also used this system,' I insisted.

'Exploiting classes,' sniffed one friend.

'In any case, you do agree that this photograph is within the realm of possibility, don't you?' asked another.

'Possibility, yes, but...'

'There you go, then,' came the swift reply, 'you have the perfect reason for holding the same view as me. And opinion, as you know, is the essence of truth.'

I stood up in frustration and walked to the river's edge where I spied a plaque carrying a quotation by Walter Raleigh. 'There are two things scarce matched in the universe,' it read, 'the sun in heaven and the Thames on Earth.'

Looking at London's main waterway, the syphilitic murkiness of which had not changed much since Raleigh's day, I felt exonerated. Opinion be damned. Not all the vials of penicillin could ever induce me to dip my toe in the river.

As I chuckled to myself and turned my back on the Thames, I spied Hodge one last time. I could have sworn that he winked at me before disappearing like the Cheshire Cat.