A pet cat called Cupcake has spent over a week in the post, after apparently falling asleep in a box.
Owner Julie Baggott did not spot the animal when she packed up a box of DVDs and sent it off to a customer.
Eight days later, the female cat arrived in Worthing, West Sussex, after somehow surviving the 260-mile journey from Falmouth in Cornwall.
The customer was understandably “somewhat startled”, vets said, when the box of DVDs was opened and Cupcake jumped out.
After being contacted, the RSPCA collected the cat and took it to Grove Lodge veterinary hospital in Worthing.
Dr Ben Colwell, a vet at Grove Lodge who treated Cupcake, said: “She was quite dehydrated and obviously really quite scared, quite nervous.
“She’s done really, really well, she’s responded to fluids really well. Luckily she was microchipped.”
After scanning the cat and discovering the microchip, the vets found Baggott’s details and got in touch.
The owner had been distraught at the loss of her cat. She and her family had put up posters and searched around Falmouth for days.
“When I realised she was missing, two weeks ago, it was the most horrible, scary feeling,” she told BBC South Today. “We looked everywhere for her.
“I feel terrible about what’s happened, you know. I mean, I put everything in the box and I sealed it straight away, so I don’t know how she managed to get in there.
“It was a miracle she was alive, she’s managed to survive that awful ordeal.”
Cupcake required several days of treatment for dehydration but has made a full recovery since being collected by Baggott and taken back to Cornwall.
Royal Mail does not accept live animals, with a few exceptions including bees, some other insects and earthworms.
In 2006, a Cambridge University student was fined £750 and banned from keeping animals for 10 years after he and a friend posted a hamster as a prank.
The hamster gnawed through the envelope and was rescued by a postman, who decided to name him First Class.
- This article was amended on 27 March 2016. An earlier version implied that insects, bees and earthworms are not animals.
