A family pet from Cowes on the Isle of Wight has taken the island’s tradition of sailing to heart, having stowed away on board a yacht for several weeks.

The stowaway cat, named Dolly, was discovered in hiding in one of the yacht’s cabins after the boat’s owners were at sea on a five week trip.

The boat owners cared for Dolly, whom they believed to be a stray, until they reached their stopping point in Poole on the UK’s southern coast in Dorset.

They took the adventurous feline to the vet where Dolly’s microchip was found, enabling the clinic to contact Dolly’s owners, Debs Murphy-Latham and her daughters Natasha, 10, and Annabelle, seven.

The family were reunited with their beloved and well-travelled cat in Southampton, where they took Dolly for a ride on the high speed ferry back home to the Isle of Wight.

Dolly, a rescue cat from the Cats Protection League in Ryde, is quite an escape artist according to her owners, and this is not the first time she has jumped on board a yacht.

Murphy-Latham told the Daily Mail, “We had been keeping her inside after she got on to a yacht in November, but she sneaked out while the children were getting ready for school a couple of weeks later and we hadn’t seen her since.

“She was run over in March and we thought we were going to lose her, but she pulled through. We were all very upset when she went missing. We just didn’t know what had happened.

“My daughters will have to peel themselves off the ceiling, they are so excited to have her back.”

Murphy-Latham called Dolly,‘such a fantastic little character,’ and added: “I’d quite like her to stay put this time so she might be spending a few weeks indoors just until she remembers where she lives.”

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