I have the following function defined in my Spyder startup file:

# startup.py
#-----------
def del_globals(*names):
   for name1 in names:
      try: del globals()[name1]
      except KeyError: pass # Ignore if name1 doesn't exist

At the Spyder console, I run the following script with the debugger to create a variable cat before descending into a function:

# MyScript.py
#------------
runfile('The/Path/to/startup.py') # In case functions are deleted
cat='dog'
del_globals('cat')

I have a breakpoint at the last line del_globals('cat'). Upon breaking, I confirm that cat is a variable in the global namespace:

sorted(globals().keys())
# ['TKraiseCFG', '__builtins__', '__doc__', '__file__',
#  '__loader__', '__name__', '__nonzero__', '__package__',
#  '__spec__', 'cat', 'del_globals']

I then step into del_globals('cat') and at the very first line (the for statement), confirmed that cat is not in the global namespace

sorted(globals().keys())
['TKraiseCFG', '__builtins__', '__doc__', '__loader__',
 '__name__', '__nonzero__', '__package__', '__spec__',
 '_spyderpdb_builtins_locals', '_spyderpdb_code',
 '_spyderpdb_locals', 'del_globals']

Should there be just one global namespace, and should that be the prevailing namespace at the REPL command line?

P.S. For background, the context is described here and here.