Canadians mourn for Lady Thatcher

Toronto: The news spread like wildfire among the 1,700 mainly Conservative guests at the gala remembrance dinner.

On mobile phones and BlackBerries came a text message announcing the sad news that Lady Thatcher was dead.

All chatter at the True Patriot Love Tribute dinner in Toronto, in honour of Canada's armed forces, was silenced as those present pondered the significance of the Iron Lady's passing.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper ordered staff to contact Buckingham Palace and Downing Street to confirm the news and start preparing an official statement.

His aide Dimitri Soudas immediately began the sombre task.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, as Lady Thatcher had been fit enough to attend the Remembrance Day service at Westminster Abbey, the reaction from Britain was one of bemusement.

"She's alive and well, if a little frail," the Canadians were told.

Only then did the penny, or in this case the cent, finally drop. Thatcher, it turned out, was the name of transport minister John Baird's 16-year-old grey tabby cat.

He had named her after Britain's first woman prime minister because he admired her so much and had simply wanted to pass on the sad, but hardly world-shattering news that she [the cat] had died.

So he had texted a guest, who just happened to be at the gala dinner, to break the sad news.

"Thatcher is dead," read the message, and no one imagined he was just talking about his cat. It took about 20 minutes for realisation to dawn and then another flurry of texts at the Toronto dinner to let everyone know that the Lady was still not for turning in her grave.

Soudas was left with the task of apologising to Britain for causing so much trouble.

"If the cat wasn't dead, I'd have killed it by now," he is reported to have quipped.