Now Mr Hemming (Lib Dem Yardley) has revealed that Beauty has been found - and may have started a family of her own (hence, while most news reports have talked about "Beauty the kitten" I guess she's now too grown up to be called anything but a cat).

Writing on the Restirred forum, Mr Hemming said: " . . . nothing further was heard of her until someone phoned my constituency office yesterday about a cat which had been living further along Showell Green Road near Eileen Road closer to Wake Green Road

"I went to see the cat last night and indeed it was Beauty. We, however, think that she is feeding kittens at the moment so she has been returned to the lady who had kindly looked after her for a year so that we can try to track down the kittens."

And Mr Hemming added: "It seems that Beauty has been looked after by two households at the same time. I think one of those households also has her kittens (more likely than they are outside).

"We need to track down the other household that is looking after Beauty. If they have her and a litter of kittens I would not be surprised if there was some form of arrangement we could come to. In any event I don't want to take her away from her kittens. (If indeed there are kittens which I think there are)."

As a cat lover I always wondered where Beauty had ended up. The poor cat may have ended up destitute and starving. Anyway, it turns out that this story does have a happy ending for Beauty.