BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award for this story from Norfolk.
A Savannah cat, like the one in the picture here, is a cross between a domestic cat and a small wild cat from Africa called a serval. So this one was probably rather on the small side for a big cat.
But, as one of the judges remarked, this does prove that they're out there.
Here's something I didn't know: this chart-topping Blondie single from 1978 is an elegy to a lost cat.
Sunday Girl was written by the band's guitarist Chris Stein about Debbie Harry's lost cat Sunday Man. He once told Jools Holland:
"The cat ran away and we were very sad. It was just a sort of plaintive, evocative number."
This is not the first such record to feature here on a Sunday. Henry Gross wrote Shannon about the death of a red setter that belonged to Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.
"For a long time, peatlands were treated as marginal, soggy places at the edge of more useful land. Peatlands are now becoming central to climate regulation, water security, biodiversity and the livelihoods of many people who live on and around them." Alice Milner on her research into peatlands and tackling climate change.
Norman Baker explains why buses in central London are slower than their horse-drawn counterparts were more than a century ago. He also has suggestions for speeding them up.
Danny Chambers is campaigning against the cruelty often involved in breeding what are, to my eye, ugly animals. "Across the UK, more and more dogs and cats are being bred to look fashionable or cute. But this can come at a serious cost to their health and welfare."
"The film encompasses many influences – neorealist working-class documentary in its early Belfast set street scenes; poetic realism in its studio-bound aspects and fatalism; noir thriller; and expressionist reimagining of Greek myth, as a fatally wounded Johnny is left behind in the botched escape and a rogue’s gallery of the city’s denizens alternately help and hinder his path through the Underworld entries, bars and rain-slicked slums of a darkened, almost Dickensian city." Tim Pelan sings the praises of Carol Reed's Odd Man Out (1947).
"As time went on, I felt more in control of the thing, and stopped fearing that I was going to show myself – and all womenkind – up, by passing out from the heat, more relaxed and more appreciative of the experience. The engine is indeed a star. There were waving people on every bridge, and we passed a campsite with lots more waving people. I got so keen on waving back to them that I almost forgot my job." Stephanie Gaunt learns to drive a steam locomotive.
The photograph shows the ruined church of St Mary in Arden by Market Harborough railway station, where the story begins.
"The shortage of legal children’s homes across the UK is fast becoming a national crisis. Last week, a Public Accounts Committee report revealed that nearly 800 children were sent to live in illegal accommodation in 2024, staying an average of around six months each." Gareth Davies and Tom Wall report on a national scandal.
Chris Grey on Donald Trump, Greenland and Mark Carney: "Carney’s speech can be read as a general prescription for middle powers, of which the UK is one, in the rapidly emerging new order. It can also be read, not coincidentally, as a devastating repudiation of the core propositions of Brexiters and of Brexitism."
Emma McClarkin argues that Britain's tax regime is forcing pubs to raise the price of a pint.
"After she finished The Left Hand of Darkness in 1968, she worked for Eugene McCarthy’s primary campaign, stuffing envelopes and writing newsletters in his Oregon field office. In 1972, recovering from the first draft of her novel The Dispossessed, she did newsletters for McGovern." Julie Phillips on Ursula Le Guin the political activist.
"As I walk, I wonder what one ought to put on the grave of a cat." Natalie Guest visits Ilford pet cemetery.
Diane Ray reveals the chronic miseducation of working-class children: 'As one Head of English in an academy told me in 2023: “if you are working class and in the lower sets for English you have no access to books, novels, poetry or plays, but rather a daily grind of basic literacy worksheets'."
Waterlooville was labelled a "dystopian zombie drama" in 2024, but the Liberal Democrats have turned it around, says the Local Government Association Lib Dem group.
"Researchers from the Museum of London Archaeology are tracing the history of human habitation on the banks of the River Thames through strategic trial pits and boreholes. As evidenced by the flints, the land today occupied by the Palace of Westminster was once a gravelly island called Thorney Island that prehistoric communities used to fish, hunt, and gather food." Richard Whiddington reports from beneath the Palace of Westminster.
Tim Pelan on John Huston's 1975 film The Man Who Would be King: "The pleasure of the film is the old-fashioned exotic-seeming sensibility of the setting, harking back to classic old adventures like Lives of the Bengal Lancers and Gunga Din, but with the acerbic undercutting of white colonial arrogance."
Oxford Clarion presents an invaluable guide to the university's college cats. (I like cats because they don't use unnecessary commas or award themselves unearned MAs.)
I'm not certain when I visited it, but I think it was on the day I first saw Bishop's Castle after walking there from Church Stretton. If so, it was in June 1989.
While I was looking round St Walburgha's, an old farm cat with torn ears came in to see what I was up to. I fancied he was a sort of feline Brother Cadfael: after travelling the world, he was devoting his final years to caring for this little church.
As the blurb on YouTube explains, there are four coalfields in Shropshire:
A man who ran for Ventura County sheriff will stand trial for allegedly trying to register four cats to vote.
Bruce Boyer, a Chatsworth resident, is accused of trying to register four cats to vote ahead of the 2024 election. He pleaded not guilty to those charges earlier this year.
As detailed by the Ventura County Star, Boyer allegedly tried to enroll Cool T. Cat, Estrea D. Tigre, Fritz T. Cat and Sylvester T. Cat as voters.
My own view is that cats are certainly intelligent enough to vote, but because they're anarchists I wouldn't trust them to turn out on the day.
This clip from 1973 is lovely. Two cats who share a bank account and use it to make donations to good causes.
If you wanted a picture of Britain in the Seventies, you couldn't do better than watch old editions of Nationwide. Yes, there were strikes, but there was much more besides - the rise of consumerism and environmentalism, and glorious pieces of eccentricity like this.
Thanks to Alix from the Shropshire Witches Podcast for posting this on Instagram.
Amanda Dylina Morse says youth workers can be powerful counters to figures like Andrew Tate and provide a positive example of manhood.
Andrew Pakes, Labour MP for Peterborough, introduces his co-operative housing bill: "Co-operative housing sits in stark contrast to the exploitative rental market or unaffordable home ownership, because the model gives power and control to the people who live there."
"In 1958 the Roman Catholic archbishop, John Heenan, was stoned while visiting a sick woman at her home off Netherfield Road; in 1967, prime minister Harold Wilson, a Merseyside MP, advised against Queen Elizabeth attending the consecration of the city’s new Roman Catholic cathedral for fear of a Protestant backlash. In the following year, Protestant Party candidates were again elected to seats on the city council." Ian Cobain on the evaporation of sectarianism in Liverpool.
Jeff Swim goes wandering through pagan Wiltshire with Richard Jefferies: "The Uffington White Horse ... showed me that paganism, as it is expressed in Jefferies, is an aesthetic of the process of walking the countryside and seeing things scurry in and out of view as you proceed, of seeing lines and figures take shape as you move with them."
At last! I've found a site celebrating cats in cinema and television: Cinema Cats.
Luke McGee suspects Putin is up against his biggest opponent yet - Trump's ego: "Trump clearly wants something that looks like a peace deal so he can show off what a great negator he is. If Trump now sees Putin as the block to a deal, that is a problem for Putin, as he has to make a choice between looking weak domestically or losing whatever goodwill he had with Trump’s White House."
"Yes, Pecksniff and Trump are bullshit artists of the highest order and neither ever experiences the least bit of remorse." Robin Bates argues that Charles Dickens, with Mr Pecksniff from Martin Chuzzlewit, anticipated Donald Trump.
Ray Newman watches Some People, which was made in Bristol in 1962 with a young cast including Ray Brooks and David Hemmings: "The church opened in 1956 and was typical of the space age houses of worship built on overspill estates all over the country in the post-war period. Unfortunately, though it looked astonishing, it was plagued with structural problems and was demolished in 1994, which only adds to the value Some People holds as a record of a time and place."
Benjamin Poore says that Shostakovich spoke truth to power - both Nazi and Communist - through his Babi Yar Symphony.
"Without any particular training, the animals - like human babies - appear to pick up basic human language skills just by listening to us talk. Indeed, cats learn to associate images with words even faster than babies do." Christa Lesté-Lasserre discusses a study that supports my view that cats are much cleverer than they choose to show us.
Forget Larry: we all know whose territory Downing Street really was. It belonged to Palmerston, the Foreign Office cat.
This afternoon came this exciting news from the BBC:
Palmerston, the former resident cat at the Foreign Office, has been brought out of retirement for a new overseas diplomatic posting nearly 3,500 miles away in Bermuda.
A post on Palmerston's X account, announced the black and white rescue cat - who served as the chief mouser Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) between 2016-2020 - had moved to the British Overseas Territory as "feline relations consultant".
Palmerston's account claimed he had been "lured out of retirement" by "diplomacy and a purr-fect role" with Bermuda's new governor, Andrew Murdoch.
Murdoch, a contemporary of Palmerston at the Foreign Office, has owned the famous cat since his retirement.
Welcome back, boss.
Hurry over to Harborough FM for the full story and lots of pictures:
Concerned members of the public alerted Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service this morning and firefighters arrived on the scene at around 10.30am to start a rescue operation which took two-and-a-half hours.
With Dante proving difficult to coax down via a ladder, a passing roofer in a cherry picker offered to help and the male cat was eventually rescued just before 1pm.
According to a news report from the organisers, Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, the contest was won by Mr Speaker's cat Attlee by only 40 votes.
Now, I'm not saying that Attlee used his occupancy of Speaker's House to pull strings, but shouldn't he come forward and clear this up once and for all?
Running an eye over the runners, there's only one choice for the loyal Liberal Democrat. Step forward Murphy, a 21-year-old veteran belonging to our own Layla Moran.
Among the opposition are Mr Speaker's Attlee and the Bishop of Newcastle's Ebba.
The judges ask why there is now a mania for strange breeds when the domestic cats we know and love are so beautiful.
Andy Cowper on the Darzi review of the NHS: "It’s interesting how much the Darzi review emphasises Lansley’s NHS reforms. It’s also politically smart, because they were a total failure. Choice, competition, and clinical commissioning achieved nothing in the English NHS over the past 12 years. The Darzi review’s main, unstated purpose is about the allocation of political blame. It does that quite effectively."
"The first government minister who kept a cat with him when on government business was Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII. It was said he travelled with a number of cats, took them to Mass and that they sat in at meetings with him. The statue of Cardinal Wolsey in Ipswich shows a cat peeping around his robes." Nicola Cornick sets out the long history of political cats.
"Despite the grave fate that awaits Mary, for the most part Yield to the Night is a quiet film that relies on the emotional dexterity of its star for a narrative engine. At every juncture, Dors was not just convincing, but compelling. It was a mammoth, and yet searingly intimate, performance." Chloe Walker celebrates Diana Dors' wonderful performance in the anti-death-penalty film Yield to the Night (1956).
Matt McManus wants the left to read the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre.
Shroppie Mon will tell you all about a Shrewsbury dragon.
Residents and visitors to Canterbury have been treated to the unusual sight of baby beavers swimming in the River Stour.
The babies, called kits, are thought to be the first to be born in a wild urban setting in England for centuries.
The semi-aquatic rodents are known as a keystone species because of the enormous impact they have on the wildlife around them.
Sandra King, chief executive officer of the Beaver Trust, said: "It's so exciting to see them here."
Even more striking, though, is a story from May that this report links to:
A new survey suggests the number of wild beavers now living in Kent runs into the hundreds.
The animals, which were extinct in the UK for centuries, can even be spotted in the centre of Canterbury.
There have been increasing reports of beaver signs along the River Stour in East Kent and the data indicates that an established beaver population has been present for more than 10 years.
One of the report’s authors said Kent hosted the biggest population of beavers in England.
I had no idea that beavers had returned on anything like this scale. But then I think of the words of Isabella Tree in the trailer for the film rewilding:
"As soon as the conditions are right, these species will find you somehow."
That's why I am prepared to entertain the idea that there are big cats living wild in the English countryside. We have a vacancy for an apex predator and a plentiful supply of deer, which is the sort of species these cats have evolved to predate.
