School portraits / Cathedral Close, 2018–2026
A Cathedral Cat’s CV, Better Than Any of My Children’s
Budge is not a pupil at Norwich School. Nobody seems to have told the Christmas card competition, the music department or the Royal Geographical Society.
Budge is the Norwich Cathedral cat. He lives in the Close, where Norwich School also sits, and according to the cathedral he “first wandered into the Cathedral during the 2018 Good Friday service and has made the Cathedral his second home ever since.” He has no place at the school. I have been comparing his CV with my children’s, and it is not going well.
2018. Walks into a cathedral uninvited and stays. Is later found asleep on a Choir cushion. Our cat walked into next door’s kitchen the same year and was returned in a recycling box.
August 2022. A leaver off to UCL to read Law with Spanish, after four years of cheerleading and a stint as president of the Gartley Society, tells the school what she will miss. Budge. Our eldest, asked what he would miss about primary school, said the Wi-Fi password.
December 2024. The Christmas card competition has record entries, and the theme that keeps turning up across Lower and Senior School is “the infamous beloved Cathedral cat, Budge!” Our daughter drew our cat for her primary’s card competition that year and it went home in her book bag with a note about glitter.
5 March 2026. Music scholars spend the day with the songwriter Charlie Law and come out with four original songs. The subjects: “Budge the Cathedral Cat”, “Treehouses”, “It’s Spring (But Everyone Is Still Online)” and “Invisible Lines”. The cat beats spring.
16 March 2026. In the Blake Studio, Stephen Akester gives a Royal Geographical Society talk on world fish stocks to pupils, parents and academics. The school’s report notes one further attendee. Budge “put in a guest appearance, and sat salivating over big tuna on the screen!”
Total, in eight years: a farewell, a card craze, a song and a lecture, with no entrance exam. Our cat has, over the same period, been sick in my handbag twice. I have put it on his CV. It is the only entry.
Sources
- Norwich School, fisheries lecture report, 16 March 2026
- Norwich Cathedral, Budge the Cathedral Cat
- Norwich School, A Level Results Day, 18 August 2022
- Norwich School, Christmas card competition, 2 December 2024
- Norwich School, music-making day, 5 March 2026
Notes from the School Gates is a light-hearted column: home scenes and family characters are invented; schools and public facts are real. About the column