A pet cat who sparked a frantic search after going missing has been found safe and well in Wolverhampton – 65 miles along the M6 from her home.

Looking a little skinny and with a bandaged paw, Monica was reunited with her overjoyed family after being found in a back garden and taken to a city vet by the RSPCA. Mystery surrounds how the moggy, who was microchipped, travelled from Northampton to Wolverhampton. Owner Caroline Rands and four-year-old son Reuben travelled to St George’s Vets to collect her yesterday.

Mrs Rands wept as she said: “I’m so happy and excited and I’m in total disbelief.

“I can’t really believe she’s travelled so far. We’d begun to give up hope.

“We think she may have got into a car or van to make her way here, but we really don’t know.”

The intrepid feline was taken back along the M6 to be re-united with Mrs Rands’ husband, Paul Hampton, and her other children — Joshua, aged nine, and Freya, six.

Monica had last been seen in the early hours of April 5.

A search followed, with posters and leaflets being distributed around the family’s  neighbourhood in Northampton.

“We had given up hope of seeing her again and had even cancelled the pet insurance on her,” said 43-year-old Mrs Rands, a part-time teacher.

“Monica’s brother Bill is still at home and he’s been really pining for her. When I got a call from a vet’s in Wolverhampton I was just astounded.

“I had resigned myself to the fact we would never see her again.”

St George’s Vets marketing manager Toni Colbourne said Monica’s story showed the value of owners having pets fitted with a microchip.

She said the 12-year-old cat, who was taken in by the Rands family as a stray, was amazingly calm and placid given her ordeal.