Manninagh KateDhu was born on the Isle of Man in 1963. From a young age, she was doing her part to help her community. Her first job in government came through an appointment to Board of Agriculture and Fisheries on the Isle of Man. Apparently, she was competent enough in that position that the Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man recommended her to a post in the Prime Minister’s offices at No. 10 Downing Street in London. Manninagh flew to London and was received formally by the Home Secretary at the time and began working at the offices.

However, from the start, there was trouble. No one in London could pronounce her name (much less spell it), so they all called her Peta because the previous holder of her office was named Peter. That didn’t seem to sit to well with her. And despite receiving pay for the work, “Peta” seemed to actually do little. Her disposition wasn’t the best, you see, and her personality rubbed many people at No. 10 the wrong way. Job performance reviews from the time said that she was lazy, she was loud, and uncouth as well as lacking in proper hygiene. You would think that such a review would warrant a dismissal from such an important office in the British Government, but, well, that never happened.

Word of this uncivil servant in the cabinet offices soon spread. Newspapers spoke of the ill-tempered worker from the Isle of Man, and the public became interested in the story. Interestingly, people began writing letters to Peta. They told her things such as keep up the good work of being someone who was more like them–just a commoner in the halls of power. The public somehow related to someone who didn’t like her job and did the bare minimum to keep from being fired. In many ways, Peta became a sort of folk hero, a typical Britisher in and among the elite and mostly upper and upper middle class government of the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, Peta gained a reputation for spending inordinate amounts of time in the area of Trafalgar Square pubs and restaurants where, trading on her new-found fame, she ate her fill several times over. She never seemed to date or have companionship on these outings. And people at the office began to notice that she was becoming, well, morbid obese. And, with the weight gain, Peta also became testier if anything. A spat with a member of the Prime Minister’s household didn’t help matters. There were reports of her starting fights with other staff members. And a movement began to have her sent back to the Isle of Man.

However, that was almost impossible to do. You see, the Isle of Man enjoys special status in the United Kingdom.

To send an appointee back to the island would be considered a slap in the face of that semi-self-governing island. There was also the potential public backlash if this “commoner’s heroine” was let go. So, the Prime Minister’s office found that they were forced to make do with this most uncivil servant.

Peta managed to work for three Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom over her career. The way the office got rid of her finally was that she retired and moved in with another civil servant in her dotage. Never married, she passed away in 1980 at the ripe old age of 17.

Not a bad life for a Manx cat that was a really bad mouser, eh?