Mysteries surround Julian Assange’s cat: where is it and what does it know?
- Future of Assange’s furry feline companion unclear after the WikiLeaks founder’s Ecuador embassy exit, say internet users pondering its predicament
Julian Assange kept a lot of secrets pent up with him in a cramped corner room at the Ecuadorean embassy in London. But as his seven-year tenure there ended ignominiously on Thursday, one final mystery captured the attention of the international community: what will happen to embassy cat?
The asylum seeker’s furry friend was Assange’s only consistent companion during some of his lonely years as a self-styled political refugee. The cat had a significant internet following of its own – though its views hewed suspiciously close to its human’s – and it was apparently a fixture at the embassy, with a penchant for pouncing on Christmas tree ornaments and defusing tension as the WikiLeaks founder tangled with a bevy of world leaders. It was named after its famous home, but occasionally went by “James” or “Cat-stro” after the Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s death in 2016.
His Twitter and Instagram accounts – which have a combined total of 36,000 followers – also monopolised the market for cybersecurity-meets-cat puns (the cat was reportedly interested in “counter-purrveillance”).
So when British police entered the Ecuadorean embassy, arrested Assange and took him into custody after a US federal court unsealed an indictment charging him with conspiracy, many worried about the fate of the feline.
Would the cat’s asylum end, too? Or was it just beginning? Would someone adopt it, or would it also face extradition to the US? Would it fall victim to a vast conspiracy? Did it know too much?