A WOMAN who volunteered to look after a cat while its owners went on holiday, is frantically searching the streets trying to find it.

Cat-lover Carole Stewart's problems began when she agreed to look after the pet for her best pal's daughter who was going to Jamaica for three weeks.

Brian, a timid black and white rescue cat, was brought all the way from Leeds where it lives with its owner, former Chorley girl, Sarah Dowthwaite.

After two days crouching under a bed in fear, the petrified pet finally found the courage to come out. Seconds later, however, it bolted out of the front door and was away down the street.

Now Carole, aged 50, is at her wit's end with worry. "It shot upstairs under a bed as soon as it arrived. Then I spent two days talking to it and trying to get him out.

"When Brian did make a break for it he ran downstairs, out through an open door and hasn't been seen since."

Carole, pictured here searching for the lost pet, is terrified of Brian's owner Sarah finding out. "There'll be hysterics. Sarah will be really upset," she said, and added that the only reason she was looking after it was because Sarah couldn't bear to put him in a cattery while she was away. Now she has until this Sunday, July 15, to find the missing moggie, so Carole and her best mate Jen Dowthwaite, Sarah's mother, have been out and about asking locals if they've seen Brian.

They've even put an appeal out for it on the Chorley FM and they've erected posters alerting folk.

She joked: "Some people said he might be making his way back to Leeds -- it takes me and hour-and-a-half to get there, I don't know how long it will take him!

"I'm laughing now, but I will be next to disappear.

"We were looking at another cat in the neighbourhood and it crossed my mind that if we painted it a bit we could pass it off as Brian. We're talking desperate here!"