A STOWAWAY cat has been given a lifeline after workers at a local charity discovered it was due to be killed after being found in Felixstowe.The cat, thought to be just a year old, was found in a container at the port after arriving here from Malaysia and is thought to have spent three weeks in the container.

A STOWAWAY cat has been given a lifeline after workers at a local charity discovered it was due to be killed after being found in Felixstowe.

The cat, thought to be just a year old, was found in a container at the port after arriving here from Malaysia and is thought to have spent three weeks in the container.

Animal Health Officers said the cat, which has not yet been given a name, would have been destroyed this week if nobody came forward to pay for the cost of keeping it in quarantine.

Animals found at the port are given just 11 days to live unless the cost of quarantining them can be raised.

But after reading about the plight of the cat in Saturday's Evening Star, volunteers from the Ipswich branch of the Cats Protection charity came forward to say they would pay for the quarantine.

A vet who examined the cat has said it is severely emaciated but has a fighting chance of survival. It will now spend the next six months in quarantine before Cats Protection offer it for re-homing.

Pat Kettle, welfare officer for Ipswich Cats Protection said: "It is very expensive to keep a cat in quarantine for all those months but we did the same for a couple of cats that came in from Greece and they now have a lovely home together.

"We think if the cat has come all that way and gone through all that and survived it doesn't deserve to be put to sleep.

"If it needs help then we will provide it with whatever we can."