King Charles bans cats from his Sandringham estate

NEWS AND OPINION: The King owns a large estate around Sandringham which is in the south-east of England, near the Norfolk coast. Incidentally, the Royal family and the UK have far too many properties and it is a bit of an insult to the ordinary citizen in tough times to see the Royal family with so many palaces. Anyway that's another topic and I'll stick to this one which is that on the Sandringham estate there are houses which the King rents out to 'ordinary' people.

King Charles bans cats from his Sandringham estate. Image: MikeB

And I'm told that in all of these properties domestic cats are banned. He is one of those landlords that bans pet cats from his properties. I think the policy is short-sighted and unfair but apparently the rule came into play when his mother was the Queen, Elizabeth II, and it said that she might have been allergic to cats and preferred dogs. We know that she loved corgis. Dogs are allowed ('considered') on a house by house basis.

Perhaps the primary reason for this ban on domestic cats in these properties is that on the Sandringham estate they like to shoot birds. Another objectionable pastime as far as I am concerned. It's a game bird shooting estate of 20,000 acres.

And the Queen, it is said, was frightened that a pet cat would kill game bird chicks and upset the business. If that is true, it's probable that the gamekeepers advised her to ban cats from these properties to avoid any disruption to the business. 

Game bird shooting is big business in the UK but fraught, as far as I am concerned, with ethical problems and conservation issues. It also fraught with animal welfare and animal cruelty issues. 

The whole thing should be shut down but the Royal family is very much steeped in old-fashioned ways in the UK and they stick to those traditions religiously with little desire to modernise although King Charles has expressed a desire to slim down the Royal family which would be welcome to many people.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

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British Royalty Keeping Cats

With it being the Queens's 60th wedding anniversary and with the massive jubilee celebrations taking place in the UK I thought I would find out if I could add the domestic cat into the mix and see whether there are any royals who keep cats and if so what type of cat.

By the way, I'm going down to the Thames tomorrow to have a look at the flotilla of boats accompanying the "Royal Barge" that cost a million quid - we can't afford it, I say.

I came to a rapid conclusion that the royals of Britain are dog people. That probably would not surprise most visitors who read this (very few!). The royals are sort of upper class (actually very upper class), hunting, shooting, fishing sorts and with that kind of background you are much more likely to prefer dogs. You know...the outdoor life, country sports lifestyle with hunting dogs etc.

The Queen is famous for her Corgis and that is about all I know about the Queens's animal preferences other than her love of horse racing. She kept or still keeps some racing horses.

One person who is part of the royal family but not at the heart of it is HRH Princess Michael of Kent. She has various talents including writing and interior design. She's a cat person.

People say that she is pushy and unpleasant. I don't know her but anyone who likes cats can't be unpleasant!

She keeps cats (plural). I have seen a picture on her website with two cats. One appears to be a rich dark brown/black cat  (a moggie it seems) with a studded collar and the other is a Siamese as far as I can tell from the picture. You can see a photo on this page.

Blue Persian cat of 1901 the kind Queen Victoria cared for.
The cat is Lady Marcus Beresford's blue Persian "Gentian Landor".

Even royals from the past usually kept dogs it seems. For example, Wallis Simpson who married King Edward VIII liked dogs. Although she owned a diamond bracelet of a panther worth £4.5 million ($7 million) in modern money.

If we go back a bit further we discover that Queen Victoria cared for two blue Persian cats. Victoria was the Queen from 1837 until her death in 1901. This was the era of the beginning of the cat fancy. Persian cats were one of the relatively few cat breeds of that time and very popular they were.

There is a picture of Princess Victoria ("Toria"), daughter of Edward VII & Queen Alexandra (1868-1935) holding a cat on the royal yacht (see picture). I don't how significant this is. It does indicate that a royal personage kept a Siamese cat. The picture was taken in about 1914.

I can find nothing else that indicates that British royalty liked and kept cats. It's a doggy family.

However Siamese royalty was different. Siam is now Thailand and the Siamese cat as you probably know originates in Thailand. At one time, it seems (cat history can be a bit vague) that the Siamese cat was confined to the Royal Palace and the King of Siam. This was clearly a special cat in Thailand in the 19th century and the King of Siam, at the time of the cat's export to the West, was a cat person.

Siamese Cat History
King of Siam 1853-1910

The King of Siam allowed a foreigner to export the Siamese out of Siam to start the breed in the West. The story of the Siamese cat's kinked tail is bound up with the creation of this breed in the West. See also Siamese cat history.