the ragdoll Big, beautiful and indolent, is famed for its placid temperament and tendency to go limp when picked up. A ragdoll cat lives in the Algonquin Hotel in New York: there have been resident cats in the Algonquin since the 1930s and all the males are called Hamlet and all the females Matilda. The television programme Blue Peter was at the centre of a notorious voting scandal over the naming of their ragdoll. The viewers’ chosen name of Cookie was ignored in favour of Socks. To make amends they later got themselves another cat and called it Cookie

Photograph: Holly Jollliffe