Domini felix

Visitors to Blackfriars, Cambridge, England, will encounter a Dominican cat called Leo. He wears a (rather luxurious) habit of long fur, mostly white, with some black-ish bits. Officially, these are called lilac points, but they look black-ish to the non-expert. Black-ish like a habit that could do with a visit to the laundry, not black like a cappa. 

Leo cannot be a friar, a nun or a sister so we assume he is a Lay Dominican. 

He moves in exalted circles, coming under the special protection of the Prior, Father Aidan Nichols. This protection is vital. To put it mildly, Leo is the least popular member of the community, though the heat died down a bit when a former Prior, Father David Sanders, left Cambridge for Oxford. There was murmuring to the effect that it was only Leo's price-tag (he is an aristocat with an impressive pedigree) that protected him from Fr David's widely-promulgated anti-cat policies. 

Being a Dominican, Leo is an intellectual cat so naturally he finds Fr Aidan's study a congenial environment. The nature of any contribution Leo may have made to Fr Aidan's writings is unclear. 

A recent Aquinas lecture at Blackfriars focused on whether St Thomas thinks that cats and other non-human beings have a place in Heaven. The speaker’s conclusion was that on balance the answer is probably yes, and as he wound up his concluding remarks, Leo walked into the chapel and sat down on the top of the altar steps, presumably to indicate his approbation. 

When his other duties permit, Leo comes to Lay Dominican Fraternity meetings, positioning himself in the middle of the large library table, preferably on top of the Formation documents. In winter, during the afternoon Aquinas session, he takes up position immediately in front of the fire where, having achieved a venerable age, he occasionally loses the thread of Thomist argument and nods off. In summer, he prefers the window seat from which he can survey all that moves (and might be good to eat) in the garden while still, of course, listening critically to our debate. The standard of discussion can be a little variable and if we wander from the point St Thomas is trying to make, Leo becomes exasperated and stalks back to Fr Aidan's room in disdain. 

Suspected of the occasional lapse from canonical discipline (ignoring the Lenten fast, for example) Leo nevertheless has bursts of piety and has been known to come along for Evening Prayer. 

Physically heroic, Leo has a fearsome reputation for killing opponents smaller than himself and driving away those bigger than himself. It is said that there was a Muntjack deer that wandered into the garden once and was seen off. And of course Fr David is in Oxford, now...

Supervising novice friars on gardening day