Weston-super-Mare cat travels 800 miles in removal van to Llanelli, Bournemouth and beyond

• Laura recalls the moment she heard Jasmine had been found.

A cat from Weston-super-Mare is relaxing at home after taking an 800-mile road trip around Wales and the West Country.

Jasmine the eight-year-old Siamese went missing last Tuesday, 9 January - leaving her owner Laura Teale sick with worry.

Two days later, when Laura got a call from a vet in Dawlish, the details of Jasmine's mystery road-trip came to light.

Laura said: "She's normally really shy and timid so this was massively out of character for her. It's pretty extreme.

"We realised she was missing on the Wednesday morning, although I was worried on Tuesday evening because she hadn't eaten her food.

"She is quite curious so I thought maybe she'd crawled into one of our neighbours' sheds.

"On the Wednesday morning we started putting up missing posters and leafleting. Then on Thursday we got the call to say they'd traced her microchip."

From speaking to the vets in Dawlish and van-owner Jeff Boorman, Laura managed to piece together the stages of Jasmine's epic trip.

"Our neighbours were moving house and they left at around 1 o'clock on Tuesday for Llanelli.

"We knew our other neighbour had seen Jasmine at 12 o'clock that day, so she couldn't have left before then.

"When the vets called me they said she'd been found in a van engine, because there were two silver vans on our road that day.

"So she went to Llanelli, Swansea, then to the driver's home in Devon. He does lots of logisitics, so the following day she went to Exeter, Honiton, Bournemouth, Chippenham.

"She'd been all over the South West basically and luckily she stayed where she was until he opened his bonnet to check his screen-wash on Thursday afternoon," Laura said.

She added that she was surprised Jasmine had let Jeff lift her out of the engine and take her to the vets, because she's "normally quite shy of strangers".

The vet was able to check her microchip and trace Jasmine back to Laura, whom they called immediately.

She said: "I got the phone call at 4pm on the Thursday. We were out leafleting and I don't remember the walk home.

"I got home and I said to my partner 'they've found her, we've got to get to Devon before seven', because that was when the vets closed.

"We grabbed the cat carrier and jumped in the car and we got there about half six.

"Normally at the vets she sort of hides at the back of her basket, but she was at the front trying to get out and she looked quite delighted to see us."

It was a big relief to be reunited with Jasmine, as Laura said she thought she'd "never see her again".

All the while, she was trying to hide the pet's disappearance from her son Leo. "He loves her, they're usually inseparable," Laura said.

Jasmine was dehydrated after her adventure, but otherwise unharmed. She's now chilling out at home before heading to the vets for a check-up this afternoon, Tuesday 16 January.