The cat’s finally out of the bag.

Rumours and accusations have swirled for days over whether Premier Danielle Smith accepted a solid gold cat sculpture from Saudi Arabia.

Tuesday, the premier’s office volunteered a rare photo of the beast.

Here it is, an elegant-looking thing, nicely adorned, about a foot long and six inches high.

Not a mere cat, but a leopard, it sits off to one side in the premier’s McDougall Centre office.

The statue was also pictured, somewhat blurred, in an earlier photo of the premier with Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas.

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That prompted a fake internet meme of a golden kitty jumping around and sitting on their laps.

So, there is a real cat figure — but is it gold?

The question matters when the premier stands accused of secretly accepting a hugely valuable gift.

The charges are false, says Smith’s office. The statue was scanned and proved to be about 95 per cent copper.

Ten pounds of pure copper would be worth about $80.

Gold would price the statue above $700,000.

That’s the difference between an ordinary protocol gift and a giant scandal.

There are some real government scandals to worry about. Turkish ibuprofen, for example.

Smith’s kitty critics are distracting even themselves.

Rob Anderson, Smith’s chief of staff, went public Tuesday, addressing “all those Nenshi followers who buy your tinfoil in bulk.

“The cat sculpture is worth a few hundred dollars and is made of copper, not gold.

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“It was gifted to the people of Alberta by the energy minister of Saudi Arabia, who was attending the World Petroleum Conference in Calgary in 2023.

“It was not a personal gift to the premier and is being displayed at the McDougall Centre premier’s office out of respect for a country we are developing an important and growing trading relationship with.”

NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi claimed the cat truly is gold when he attacked in the legislature Monday.

“When you get a gift, it either goes to the archives or, if you think it’s really pretty and you want to display it in your office, you have to scan it, X-ray it, look for bugs, look for listening devices.

“So, when the premier received a giant golden cat from the Saudi government, did she scan it? Did she check it out? Or did she think it was just so darn pretty that she threw it on the wall?”

As Nenshi should know, scanning is routine. It’s done for eavesdropping devices and security threats in both Calgary and Edmonton premiers’ offices.

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Braid: The cat sculpture gift from Saudi Arabia is beautiful. It just isn't gold Columnists

Braid: The cat sculpture gift from Saudi Arabia is beautiful. It just isn't gold

There’s no special routine for cat statues, but this one was apparently subjected to X-ray fluorescence analysis, which reveals metal content.

Protocol gifts often fall under suspicion for bugs.

Ex-premier Jason Kenney was so concerned about eavesdropping that he wouldn’t have a statue gifted by one foreign consulate in his office.

After Nenshi’s legislature attack, government house leader Joseph Schow said the cat isn’t gold and “she’s not taking it home.”

He tried to laugh it off. “I’m more of a dog person myself,” Schow said.

For the government, however, this was no longer funny. The golden cat craze was running wild, creating a damaging image of a premier on the take.

Smith was being compared to former PC premier Alison Redford, who resigned in 2014 after misusing government aircraft.

Redford booked non-existent passengers on government planes so she could fly alone — “ghost riders in the sky,” in the immortal words of former columnist Paula Simons.

She also planned to build a personal suite for her family in a government building, the so-called Sky Palace.

These were facts, firmly established by investigation.

The golden cat, by contrast, turns out to be a copper copycat.

But a golden gift is a perfect modern meme for social media. Who cares about the facts anyway?

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald

X and Bluesky: @DonBraid

© Calgary Herald