The government was considering exterminating all the cats in Britain during the early stages of the Covid pandemic, according to a former health minister – and Twitter, understandably, has not taken to this news kindly.
Following on from a leaked WhatsApp messages revealing how ministers really reacted to the initial Covid outbreak in 2020, Lord Bethell told Channel 4 News that there was a “little bit of evidence” suggesting that cats could pass on the deadly virus.
He explained: “There was a moment where we were very unclear about whether domestic pets or not could transmit the disease.
“In fact, there was the idea at one moment that we may have to ask the public to exterminate all the cats in Britain.”
He didn’t mention that No.10 has had a feline resident for the last 12 years – Larry the cat is now on his sixth prime minister.
Lord Bethell chuckled: “Can you imagine what would have happened if we had wanted to do that?”
Well, Twitter has arrived just in time to tell him exactly what would have happened.
Of course, other people were terrified at this insight, as it revealed how the government responded to even the tiniest amounts of evidence with a... mass culling.
And, of course, you can’t overlook how Boris Johnson’s famous strategy of “putting a dead cat on the table” – where you announce something deliberately shocking to distract from other political issues – appears to have come to life with this latest clip...