Manchester to Cumbria road-trip for stowaway kitten

Vet staff disagree over whether the kitten should be renamed Sprout or Audi

A kitten appears to have survived a journey from Manchester to Cumbria in the undercarriage of a car.

The animal - believed to be about five months old - was handed in to a vet's clinic in Windermere which is now trying to trace his owners.

It was spotted by a customer at a bicycle shop in Ings on Monday and retrieved by staff who said the kitten was dirty and terrified.

Student veterinary nurse Emma Humphreys said it was now happy and "unscathed".

This is the second time the practice has been asked to help a stowaway.

"We had a little ginger kitten who had travelled up on the axle of a bus from somewhere in the Midlands," Ms Humphreys said.

"He'd done really well as well. They seem to cope quite well travelling that way."

Sprout or Audi?

The previous runaway was named Axle but staff disagree over whether the kitten should be called Sprout, after the season, or Audi, after the car on which it hitched a ride.

Tracing the owner is proving "really difficult" as the kitten is not micro-chipped but there has been a lot of interest from people wanting to re-home it, Ms Humphreys said.

Bike shop staff said the kitten was heard meowing in their car park by a woman who then asked them for help retrieving it.

She found the car's owners, who had come from Manchester, in an adjacent cafe but they were on their way to Scotland, they said.