Julian Assange got a kitten for company, but now it’s tweeting and making him look strange

It has been almost four years since Ecuador granted Julian Assange, the founder and editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, asylum in its embassy in London. A police van is stationed outside the building, and he fears that he will be detained if he tries to leave, given that there is still a warrant out for his arrest.

He has Internet access, is allowed visitors and interacts with embassy staff, but much of his time is spent alone in quasi-solitary confinement.

But this week, Assange got a new friend to keep him company, and, apparently, stick up for him on social media. The unnamed cat, reported by British media to have been a gift from Assange’s children, immediately got a Twitter handle, @EmbassyCat, and presumably “dictates” to Assange the pun-filled witticisms that it wants broadcast to the world. As a spectacle aimed at softening Assange’s image, it simultaneously evokes “awws” - and pity.

If he leaves the embassy, Assange faces extradition to Sweden for questioning over multiple allegations of rape and sexual assault, though he has cited American threats to prosecute him for the publication of a three-quarters of a million classified and sensitive documents leaked by US Army Private Chelsea Manning as his main reason for seeking asylum. There are still four more years until the statute of limitations are up on the charges Assange faces in Sweden.

Accounts of Assange’s strange life within the confines of the embassy portray him as somewhat consumed by paranoia, which may be warranted. There are reportedly eight police officers devoted to monitoring the building in case he attempts an escape - which costs the British public an astonishing £4.2 million (roughly US$6 million) in tax money annually. The Huffington Post reported that Assange has asked journalists not to name his favorite sushi take-out place. “They might track the place down,” he said. “They might put something in there that won’t kill me, but make me very sick so I’ll have to go to hospital.”

Assange