Downing Street cat fight captured on camera

Larry, the PM's cat, takes a claw to the throat from Mr Osborne's pet Freya. Credit: Steve Back/Political Pictures

Many a Prime Minister and Chancellor will have quarrelled behind closed doors, but finally a full blown cat fight has been captured on camera at Downing Street involving the residents of Number 10 and 11.

While David Cameron and George Osborne were nowhere to be seen, it was left to their feline pets to trade paws in a dawn scrap outside Number 10.

The only photo evidence of the fight shows a victory for the Treasury with Mr Osborne's tabby, Freya, clawing the neck of the PM's puss, Larry, who witnesses reported soon retreated to the his owner's office.

Larry was famously appointed the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office two years ago.

Although he struggled to justify his posting - six months passed before the predator claimed his first victim - he earned a reputation for aggressive responses to press inquiries.

ITV News' own UK Editor, Lucy Manning, was repeatedly scratched by the Battersea recruit while reporting from the Thatcher Room at Number 10 last year.

Which may explain why she was not entirely unhappy to learn Freya landed the bigger blows: