Feuding cats and dogs
I AM obliged to the Souvenir Press, which has sent me a review copy of Vivienne Angus's Know Yourself Through Your Cat. It offers an unusual insight into our leaders of business and finance, who clear- ly divide into cat people and dog people. Cat keywords, the author says, are: female, passive, mystical, spiritual, crea- tive, introvert, night, moon, intuition, sensitivity, emotion, unconscious. Dog keywords are: male, active, logical, earthy, energetic, aggressive, extrovert, day, sun, reason, sense, mind, conscious. Lord (Harold) Lever sensed this with feline perception, explaining why Margaret Thatcher could not get on with her Gov- ernor of the Bank of England, Lord Richardson: 'She's a dog person, and he's a cat person.' Things are better, now that John Major and Robin Leigh-Pemberton are both clearly dogs, though of different breeds — an Airedale and a curly-coated retriever? At the Treasury, Norman Lamont is a cat and so is Sir Peter Middleton, though his successor as Perma- nent Secretary, Sir Terence Burns, is a dog, possibly a pointer. There can be tensions, so this theory implies, when a cat and a dog have to share the same basket. At British Airways, Lord King is a dog — who could be more canine? — and Colin Marshall (chief executive) is more of a cat. At National Westminster, Lord Alexander is a cat and Tom Frost (chief executive) is a dog. At the Midland, a pedigree Kit was asked to move in with a bunch of Yorkies. Now for my saucer of milk.
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