英国唐宁街“第一猫”西比尔去世

Sybil the cat, who moved into Downing Street shortly after Prime Minister Gordon Brown took office two years ago, has died after a short illness.

The black and white feline, named after Basil Fawlty's wife in the hit 1970s comedy Fawlty Towers, was brought to London by Alistair Darling after he became Chancellor of the Exchequer in Brown's government in June 2007.

Sybil died earlier this week at the home of a family friend, a Downing Street spokesman said.

"Mew Labour is dead," quipped the Independent daily, referring to the fact that Sybil was the first new cat in Downing Street since Tony Blair took power in 1997, after famously rebranding his party as New Labour.

Sybil's arrival was inauspicious, it noted: weeks after she arrived, Darling was grappling with the first run on a bank in over a century at the Northern Rock, presaging last year's full-blown global financial crisis.

Darling's official residence is number 11, next door to Brown's 10 Downing Street home, but a spokesman for the incoming premier admitted in 2007 that the cat would have the run of both houses.

"It's quite difficult to confine cats, so, yes. The prime minister doesn't have a problem with it. (The prime minister's wife) Sarah Brown doesn't have a problem with it," he said at the time.

Sybil's predecessor as chief mouser in the seat of government was Humphrey, who arrived in 1989 when Margaret Thatcher was in office, but left shortly after Blair came to power.

日前，英国“第一猫”西比尔身患急症去世。英国首相戈登．布朗两年前上任后不久，西比尔便入住唐宁街。

西比尔的名字取自上世纪70年代的热门喜剧《弗尔蒂旅馆》中主人公巴兹尔．弗尔蒂妻子的名字。2007年6月阿利斯泰尔．达林出任布朗政府的财政大臣后，就将这只黑白相间的名猫带至伦敦生活。

唐宁街一位发言人称，西比尔于本周初在一位家庭朋友的家中去世。

英国《独立报》讽刺道：“工党的猫死了”，暗指西比尔是1997年托尼．布莱尔走马上任以后新来唐宁街的第一猫。布莱尔上任之前，将其所属的工党重新命名为“新工党”，这在当时引发轰动。

该报还写道，西比尔的到来预示着不幸，她到后仅几周，达林就为了对付百年一遇的北岩银行问题而焦头烂额，而这又成为去年席卷全球的金融危机的先兆。

达林的府邸在唐宁街11号，紧邻布朗的10号官邸，但2007年布朗上任之初，他的一位发言人就曾表示，第一猫会两家跑。

这位发言人当时说：“想把猫关住实在太难了，的确是这样。首相没觉得这有什么麻烦的，（首相夫人）莎拉．布朗也没觉得。”

西比尔的前任、英国首相府的“头号捕鼠器”汉弗莱在1989年入住唐宁街，当时在位的是他的女主人玛格丽特．撒切尔夫人。但布莱尔上任后不久，汉弗莱就“退休”了。

Vocabulary:

quip：gibe, sally, jape（讽刺，嘲弄）

inauspicious：boding ill; ill-omened; unfavorable.（不吉利的）

presage: to forecast; predict（预兆，预示）