A man who found a dusty stuffed cat in his attic has discovered it is a 2,000-year-old mummy.
Robert Gray, 56, found the strange-looking artefact in his loft where it had sat for the past 50 years.
He thought the feline-shaped "pile of rags" was a stuffed cat so he took it to a vet's for an X-ray. Incredibly the series of images revealed the outline of a perfectly preserved ancient puss – complete with face, ears, spine and brain.
Experts at the Royal Cornwall Museum have now verified the remarkable find as a 2,000-year-old Egyptian mummy, worth £2,000.
Robert, an actor and B&B owner, of Portscatho, inherited the bandaged artefact when his father died in 1984 but assumed it was a fake.
He said: "My father acquired the cat in the 1970s as a token of thanks from a museum. It's been in the loft languishing there for 50 years.
"It's perfectly bandaged up and a very interesting item. Apparently interior designers love this sort of thing, as ghoulish as it sounds."
Ancient Egyptians mummified animals as religious offerings or to ensure their beloved companions would follow them into the afterlife.
Mr Gray's father, Egyptologist Peter Gray, was originally given the mummy as a gift in the 1970s.
