Royal Watch News

Princess Michael of Kent's cat is missing

Aug 9, 2012, 12:01 GMT

Prince and Princess Michael of Kent

Britain's Princess Michael of Kent's cat has gone missing.

The distraught princess - who is the wife of Queen Elizabeth's cousin Prince Michael - left the Olympics team dressage early on Tuesday (07.08.12) to search for her beloved Burmese Ruby, who has not been seen at her Kensington Palace home since Monday (06.08.12) morning.

A friend told the Daily Telegraph newspaper: 'The princess is very, very worried.'

The princess - whose name is Marie-Christine - has been knocking on doors of other Kensington Palace properties, whose residents include Prince William and his wife Catherine, to see if the 11-month-old cat could have been accidentally shut in somewhere.

The cat has never previously strayed outside of the palace grounds. It is wearing a yellow collar with a telephone number on it.

It has previously been claimed that the princess had an on-going feud with one of her former neighbours, the late Princess Diana, about her cats.

Princess Michael used to order stray cats on the estate to be trapped in cages and taken away by the RSPCA - but Diana would sneak out to release the felines before they were taken.

According to Marie-Christine's old housekeeper Julia Dias, Diana even taught her sons Princes William and Harry to shout 'Here come the cat killers' when the RSPCA arrived.

Julia said: 'Of course, the cats were not being killed - they were being taken away to new homes. But the RSPCA men stopped calling because they felt so ashamed.'

The former servant even claimed Diana put a battery-operated cat with a recorded miaow inside one of the cages as a joke.'