‘I was thinking of London and its myths, like Dick Whittington whose cat has its own statue on Highgate Hill.’— Grayson Perry

‘When lockdown first started back in March my wife Philippa and I went for a walk around the deserted City of London one evening. We came back through Gough Square where Samuel Johnson’s house is and a sculpture of his cat Hodge. When I saw this small life-sized memorial to a pet I was inspired. I was thinking of London and its myths, like Dick Whittington whose cat has its own statue on Highgate Hill. Chris Whitty is the Chief Medical officer for England and Chief Advisor to the government during the crisis. He has become the face of the Covid pandemic.

I was looking through sculptures of cats and one that really caught my eye was an Islamic incense burner. I just loved the elegant shape of it and I wondered how I might use that shape to make a kind of quiet, little domestic scale monument to the crisis we are living through. This plague cat is covered in pustules and boils made decorative.’