What happened to Julian Assange's cat?

When police arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London on Thursday, the attention of many people on social media turned to the question: What happened to his cat?

Assange was expelled from Ecuador's embassy and arrested to face extradition to the United States on a charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. Assange took refuge in the embassy while on bail during extradition proceedings for his return to Sweden where he was due to face sexual assault charges.

While he was holed up in the embassy, Assange adopted a cat named Michi, who is better known by its social media moniker Embassy Cat. It has more than 30,000 followers on Twitter and another 5,000 on Instagram.

Embassy Cat tweeted regularly after its arrival at the embassy in May 2016. Cute photos were the norm, with a bit of political grandstanding thrown in along with lots of puns. But by the fall of 2016, its tweets had become much less frequent. In 2017 it only posted three updates and just two last year, and has since fallen silent for more than a year.

After Assange was arrested, people on social media started asking about the fate of this famous feline. The Russian news agency Sputnik has been closely following developments in the story of Embassy Cat. A reporter who contacted the embassy to ask about the cat was told by a spokesman that it had left months ago.

A member of Assange's legal team has since said the cat was given to a member of the Assange family after embassy staff threatened to take it to a shelter. "Ecuador also threatened to put Assange's cat in the pound," Hanna Jonasson, a doctoral candidate in international law said in a tweet. "Incensed at the threat, he asked his lawyers to take his cat to safety. The cat is with Assange's family. They will be reunited in freedom."