A family have been left distraught after their pet cat was killed in what is believed to have been a "hit and run" in Southport.
Chris Jackson from Southport had to arrange the cremation of his family's pet cat after a suspected hit and run driver hit Jaffa with their car on Tuesday July 20.
Jaffa is believed to have been hit where Chestnut Street meets Southbank Road in Southport, although Chris did not see the car.
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Chris's son, Devin, 8, was the closest with Jaffa, and saw his cat having a seizure at the side of the road after the incident.
Chris told the ECHO: "He still talks about her all the time, asking about the cremation. We let him choose between a burial in the front garden and a cremation, and he picked cremation.
"He was distraught for about three days, he was crying constantly and just looking at pictures of her. She was a present for him when he was six, so she was about to turn two."
The father-of-two said: "My son ran out so I needed to get him back in but my partner said she saw the cat starting to seizure. It was not a good sight. When we finally got her still, I looked at her face and I just put a towel over her.
"There was no car to be seen, that's what shocked me the most. I ran out expecting the car to have stopped."
Chris wrote on Facebook saying that he heard a "bang" when he thinks Jaffa was hit.
Chris, his partner Sandy, 25, and two sons, Devin and Alfie, one, are set to move to Waterloo this week after spending the last few months searching for a house that would let them have pets, only for their son's cat to die the week before they move.
He said: "Trying to find somewhere that accepts pets is the big issue. We've gone through all this trouble of getting refused because we've got pets. In Southport the market is horrific, I couldn't find anywhere.
"It's either a stupid deposit or they don't want anything to do with it. It's only a cat."
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