Govt considered covid feline cull - No 10 pet leads cat calling

The government considered whether it might have to ask people to exterminate all pet cats during the early days of the Covid pandemic.

James Bethell told Channel 4 News: “What we shouldn’t forget is how little we understood about this disease. There was a moment we were very unclear about whether domestic pets could transmit the disease.

“In fact, there was an idea at one moment that we might have to ask the public to exterminate all the cats in Britain. Can you imagine what would have happened if we had wanted to do that?”

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Leaked

This seems to be one of the MANY stories that are emerging from the leaked WhatsApp messages between Matt Hancock and many other important people during the government’s attempts to control the pandemic.

"There was an idea at one moment that we may have to ask the public to exterminate all the cats in Britain."

Former Health Minister Lord Bethell discusses the early government response to the Covid pandemic. pic.twitter.com/YWyp32zPML
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) March 1, 2023

Larry the cat?

Larry the Cat’s parody Twitter account had the best reaction to the revelation that ministers considered a cat cull during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hard not to take this personally https://t.co/z8QYcATfJw
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) March 1, 2023

Other reactions

The best thing about this would have been the day-long period before the press conference where everyone was freaking out because Number 10 had already leaked it to the Telegraph https://t.co/9wM5Easw30
— Alan White (@aljwhite) March 1, 2023

I've wondered before what it would take for Brits to revolt, and it turns out that the Tories at least workshopped it https://t.co/CLB2fHfK6b
— Andrew Frayn (@afrayn) March 1, 2023

If they'd have actually done this, a week later they'd have been like "actually, we got that wrong, we meant dogs". https://t.co/JvFXaEzWm5
— Fergus Craig (@FergusCraig) March 1, 2023

This is a dead cat story.
— John Spiers (@squeezyjohn) March 2, 2023

So these people wouldn't give you proper sick pay or leave, but they did consider killing all the cats in Britain. https://t.co/R6ERLyvyld
— Without Pity (@without_pity) March 2, 2023

I would’ve taken up arms against the state. https://t.co/WJkj3YsDSl pic.twitter.com/wBYZV8hQep
— Ash Sarkar (@AyoCaesar) March 2, 2023

Seems that they decided to ‘exterminate’ all the grandmas and grandpas instead…. https://t.co/sisMpE6JOJ
— Ren Zelen 💙 (@RenZelen) March 2, 2023

Dead Cat story trying to deflect from all the dead people story
— Martin Wellbourne (@MartinWellbour2) March 1, 2023

We're through the looking glass. The Dead Cat is now literally Dead Cats.

Bethel never did recover those messages so unfortunately not backed up when hid phone "died", did he?

Dodgy as F**k, this one. https://t.co/Ge8DTv4xaU
— Brexile grateful & loving Portugal 🇪🇺 🇵🇹🇿🇦 (@PlanetZuma) March 2, 2023

10.

Hunter becomes the hunted?

There is an idea at this moment that cats may have to ask the public to exterminate all the Tories in Britain https://t.co/Aqz1c7th1X
— Rebecca Roache (@rebecca_roache) March 2, 2023

Tags: Covid