Millie the Waitrose cat -- this time in bronze -- has resumed her role as High Barnet's most popular feline character, checking out customers at The Spires shopping centre.

Millie’s owner, Paula Gabb who lives just across Stapylton Road, was with local sculptor John Somerville for the official unveiling of a bronze statue to commemorate a cat which made a name for herself greeting shoppers outside Waitrose supermarket.

After months of negotiation and trial and error a site was finally agreed for a permanent memorial on the wall directly the opposite the main entrance.

After the installation of a wooden plinth, Millie was once again looking across at her old stomping ground from her new lookout, safe and sound on the wall between two shop fronts.

After Millie’s death in January 2019, her owner Paula was so overwhelmed with messages of sympathy that she launched an appeal for a statue and was astounded when well over 200 of Millie’s admirers made donations.

She commissioned John, who is well known locally for his life-size bronze sculpture of Spike Milligan, which is on display in East End Road, Finchley.

His cold cast bronze statue of Millie, made from a clay model, has been lacquered and polished. John says his aim was to ensure that the process of chemical patination created the closest possible representation of Millie’s colouring.

A brass plaque reflects the affection with which Millie was held by shoppers: “In loving memory of Millie, the guardian of the Spires”.

“It is wonderful to see Millie back in the Spires,” said Paula. “This is where she belongs. She gave a lot of happiness to the lives of so many people, and she will do so again. I can’t thank enough all those who made donations so that Millie won’t be forgotten.”

John said that when he was commissioned by Paula, he had not realised that there aren’t in fact many statues of cats and he found recreating Millie perhaps the second most difficult commission he had ever undertaken.

“Time and again I tried modelling Millie sitting up with one paw extended. I did two or three life size models, but they didn’t seem to work. I just could not get the angles right.

“Then I tried lying her down, with her head turned sideways and her paws crossed over the other. That was a real Millie pose, what made her very distinctive.”

Reflecting on the hours he had spent working on the statue in his studio in Wood Street, John admitted that it was perhaps his hardest ever commission.

“Humans are easy by comparison but there just isn’t a decent example of a sculpture that captures the anatomy of the face of a cat.

“Having worked on Millie for so long, I’ve come to respect her. I see her as the Guardian of the Gate, Millie the Waitrose cat, who liked to check people out when they arrived to shop at Waitrose.

“She looked relaxed, lying there with one paw over the other, but she had those piercing eyes and was checking you out before you were allowed in Waitrose. That is what I’ve tried to capture.”