Banksy’s cat artwork to be taken down by hired contractors hours after unveiling

A new Banksy artwork depicting a stretching cat on an empty, distressed advertising hoarding is to be taken down by hired contractors, hours after it was unveiled in north-west London.

The elusive street artist confirmed he was behind the piece, a silhouette of a large cat with an upturned tail stretching out its body, by posting a photo on Instagram on Saturday .

Hours later, men who said they were “hired” from a “contracting company” turned up in Cricklewood to take the hoarding down for safety reasons.

A contractor, who only wanted to give his name as Marc, said they were going to pull the boarding down on Monday and replace it, but the removal had been brought forward to Saturday in case someone “rips it down and leaves it unsafe”.

He told the PA news agency: “We’ll store that bit (the artwork) in our yard to see if anyone collects it but if not it’ll go in a skip.

“I’ve been told to keep it careful in case he wants it.”

Police taped off the path in front of the hoarding as about 50 people gathered to take pictures.

The artwork is the sixth to be unveiled by the Bristol-based artist this week in London, in what appears to be a new animal-themed collection, after he previously unveiled a goat, elephants, monkeys, a wolf and pelicans.

The cat design is the second piece this week to be removed, after a painting of a wolf howling on a satellite dish was taken off the roof of a shop in Peckham, south London, less than an hour after it was unveiled.

It was removed by three men, according to a witness, who told the PA news agency that he filmed them, which led to one of the men throwing his phone on a roof.

“It’s a great shame we can’t have nice things and it’s a shame it couldn’t have lasted more than an hour,” he said.

A statement from the Metropolitan Police said: “We were called to reports of a stolen satellite dish containing artwork at 1.52pm on Thursday August 8 in Rye Lane, Peckham.

“There have been no arrests. Inquiries continue.”

A spokesman for Banksy told the PA news agency that the artist is neither connected to nor endorses the theft of the wolf design, and that they have “no knowledge as to the dish’s current whereabouts”.

The first piece of graffiti in Banksy’s new animal-themed series, which was announced on Monday, is near Kew Bridge in south-west London and shows a goat with rocks falling down below it, just above where a CCTV camera is pointed.

On Tuesday the artist added silhouettes of two elephants with their trunks stretched towards each other on the side of a building near Chelsea, west London.

This was followed by three monkeys looking as though they were swinging underneath a bridge over Brick Lane, near a vintage clothing shop in the popular east London market street, not far from Shoreditch High Street.

The fifth design, of pelicans pinching fish from a London chip shop sign in Walthamstow, east London, was revealed on Friday.