October 4, 2026

Blackie, Britain's Last Post Office Cat

Blackie worked as a mouser at Post Office Headquarters for over a decade. At one point, he "threatened" to go on strike and successfully secured a 100% pay raise.

In 1979, Britain's Post Office cats were apparently considering industrial action. Their shop steward was Blackie, a tuxedo cat working at Post Office Headquarters in London. According to a hilariously serious report from BBC Nationwide, Blackie had already reduced his patrols to a minimum and was considering calling around 100 fellow mousers out on strike. They even had a union name: the Amalgamated Union of Mouse Operatives and Allied Trades. The whole strike thing was mostly humorous, but the jobs were definitely no laughing matter.

Blackie joins the Post Office

Blackie's career started back in 1971, when a female cat appeared in the basement of Post Office Headquarters and had five kittens. Four of those kittens found homes, but Blackie stuck around. He was put to work as a mouser and turned out to be pretty good at it.

This wasn’t anything new for the Post Office. By the time Blackie came along, Britain had been hiring cats for over a hundred years. The first three joined the London Money Order Office in 1868 after traps and other attempts to deal with the mice didn’t work out. The cats received an allowance for food and care, and the experiment worked so well that cats eventually appeared at other Post Office buildings around the country. There were famous employees along the way, like Tibs the Great, a 23-pound mouser who spent 14 years keeping the Post Office Headquarters mouse-free. Blackie was part of one of the last generations of these legendary cats.

The cat strike

By 1979, Blackie had worked his way up to being the head cat at the Post Office, earning a weekly paycheck of £1.20. A fellow black-and-white Post Office cat named Susie was making £1 a week. This was where Nationwide spotted a problem. They pointed out that, compared to living costs, Victorian Post Office cats were better compensated than their modern successors. So, Blackie was presented as a bit of a militant shop steward.

He was cutting down on his patrols and thinking about going on strike. There were about 100 other Post Office cats who could join him if things escalated. The BBC even interviewed the humans working with him, but they weren't too keen on joking about Blackie's usefulness.

One staff member mentioned that it was hard to put a price on what Blackie did. Without him handling the mice, he said, there might not be any files left to show anybody. No matter how Blackie felt about his pay, his coworkers definitely appreciated his work.

The Post Office cats get a raise

A few years later, the topic of how much the postal cats were getting paid came up again, and this time it wasn't just a television joke. In 1983, Post Office officials considered the allowances being paid to their working cats and decided they deserved an increase. After what the Post Office's own history describes as "top-level negotiations," the cats' weekly allowance was doubled. It was a 100% raise. Looks like Blackie really won that pay battle after all.

The last headquarters cat

Blackie passed away in June 1984 after spending over 10 years at Post Office Headquarters. They didn’t bring in a new cat to take his place.

By then, the job itself was fading away. The Post Office started replacing traditional cloth mail sacks that attract mice for newer, tougher materials. Pest control had also changed, so there wasn’t much need for a cat workforce anymore. Blackie became the last working cat at Post Office Headquarters.

It was the end of a system that started almost 116 years ago with three cats in the London Money Order Office. Over the years, these Post Office cats caught mice, got paid weekly, made it to Parliament discussions, appeared on TV, and even negotiated a few pay raises. According to the BBC, they almost managed to form a picket line too.

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