Pets

This page is about animals that have names, and aren't (exclusively) dogs or horses. Strictly speaking, not all of them are actual pets.

For more general questions about animals that don't fit into Natural History, see Domestic Animals.

Michael Jackson's pet chimpanzee: born in 1983, bought by Jackson from a Texas research facility as an infant; sent to an animal trainer c. 2003, having become an agressive adult and unsuitable for domesticity; has lived in an ape sanctuary in Florida since 2005 (Jackson died in 2009 aged 50)			Bubbles
Pet cat of George Osborne's family: went missing in 2009, aged just a few months, but returned in 2012; served alongside Larry for a while as Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, but retired in 2014			Freya
Appointed Chief Mouser to HM Treasury in 2016 (named after a 19th–century Prime Minister)			Gladstone
An American pet named Tardar Sauce became an Internet sensation in 2012 – nicknamed			Grumpy Cat
Name of P. T. Barnum's elephant, killed by a train in 1855			Jumbo
Appointed Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office (the Downing Street cat) in 2011			Larry
Justin Bieber's pet monkey, seized by German customs in March 2013 as its paperwork was not in order			Mally
Robert Louis Stevenson's donkey in the Cevennes			Modestine
Octopus that correctly predicted the results of all Germany's games in the 2010 FIFA World Cup finals			Paul
Chief Mouser to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 2016–20 (named after a former Prime Minister, 1859–65)			Palmerston
Name of the groundhog that features in the annual Groundhog Day celebrations in Pennsylvania (name includes the name of the town)			Punxsutawney Phil
The Clinton family's pets	The cat		Socks
	The dog		Buddy
Edinburgh Zoo's pandas (leased in 2011 from a breeding centre in China, for 10 years at $1 million a year): English translations of their names	Yang Guang (the male)		Sunshine
	Tian Tian (the female)		Sweetie

Owned a cat named Harold Wilson (in the 1970s)		Jeremy Corbyn
Owned two cats, named Hodge and Lily		Dr. Samuel Johnson

Official title of Humphrey, Sybil and Larry – the 'Downing Street Cats'

Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office

Dash the spaniel, Lory the parrot, Nero the greyhound and Hector the deerhound (these four painted by Landseer in 1837) and Noble the collie (died 1887) were among the favourite pets of

Queen Victoria

© Haydn Thompson 2017–23