For nearly 15 years, Britain’s Larry the Cat has charmed visitors to 10 Downing Street. Now another prime ministerial pet is proving a social media hit in Belgium.
Maximus Textoris Pulcher was announced in August as an official resident at the Belgian prime minister’s office, Rue de la Loi 16 in central Brussels.
The grey rescue cat is now thought to have the second most popular political account on Belgian social media, with more than 142,000 followers on Instagram – second only to his master, Bart De Wever, who became Belgium’s prime minister in February.
The cat’s full name is a mock-grandiose title rooted in the prime minister’s love of Latin and Roman history, conveying the meaning “De Wever’s beautiful Maximus” (textoris being “of the weaver”, or De Wever).
De Wever adopted the cat, an abandoned Scottish fold, from a refuge. “I have a cat in my office, it is grey and it does not catch … mice, but I love it anyway,” he told journalists during a recent press conference.
Maximus’s posts on Instagram have lit up the Belgian internet, whether he is stretching for a toy, lolling on a windowsill or being tickled on his chest to an electropop soundtrack.
Unlike Larry, officially an apolitical cat, Maximus offers subtle observations on his country’s political life. “Another strike,” reads one Maximus thought bubble on the day Belgium began a three-day national action in November against proposed spending cuts, hinting at the exasperation of his master. In another post when De Wever’s eclectic five-party coalition was locked in budget talks, a grumpy-looking Maximus lies on the floor with a thought bubble reading: “Even on Sunday, these nuisances [cabinet ministers] are here.”
A source close to De Wever – described as “a cat person all his life” – said the account was a low-effort part of his team’s work and offered the public a behind-the-scenes glimpse of Rue de la Loi 16.
Prof Dave Sinardet, a political scientist at the Free University of Brussels, said the account fell in the long tradition of politicians being portrayed with animals to show an appealing side.
This was especially true, he said, for De Wever, “who is perceived as quite competent, as a strong debater, as someone with clear ideas, but maybe as a less warm person … It can help to reinforce his warmer side.”
The Maximus account had “a subliminal political message”, Sinardet said, citing the frequent posts of the prime minister reading papers at night next to his cat. “Very often you see Bart De Wever as a hard worker, he is doing his best, he is working on Saturday night.”
De Wever, the first Flemish nationalist prime minister of Belgium, is known for his dry humour and has long used social media to share curated images of a seemingly unpretentious everyday life. His own Instagram account shows him taking a tram and ironing a shirt in a Copenhagen hotel before an EU summit.
The account “also creates a positive vibe” for people who find politics boring or conflictual, although Maximus played into that, said Sinardet. In one picture, showing Maximus outside the window of a cabinet meeting, the speech bubble reads: “And they complain about my mewling.”
And while the running gag is that Maximus is the real boss, the cat may ventriloquise De Wever’s own thoughts. “Congratulations, you are a hero,” Maximus tells De Wever, the day after a hard-fought EU summit. While the joke is that the cat is buttering up his master for more attention, it also suggests De Wever saved the day.
But politicians who complained about Maximus’s posts did not usually win public sympathy, Sinardet suggested. “That only reinforces De Wever because they come over as sour people … when, this is, supposedly just a funny, positive cute cat account.”
