BARNEY the cat is safely back home with his devoted owners Lisa and John Beasley after nearly five months "on the run".

The black-and-white tom escaped from the couple's car on May 28 and they subsequently spent hundreds of pounds advertising in the South Wales Argus in a bid to find him.

Mr and Mrs Beasley thought he might have been lost in the Mynyddislwyn area.

Then last week, they received a call from a worker at a shop in Pontllanfraith who had spotted one of their "missing" posters which they had also put up around the area.

He thought the description fitted a cat they had been feeding which had turned up a couple of weeks before.

"We have had so many phone calls that we thought it was not going to be him but when we went into the storeroom we saw that it was Barney," said Mrs Beasley.

Barney is now back at home in Ynys Y Coed, Oakdale.

"He's absolutely fine although he's still a bit shaken up and skittish and he had lost a huge amount of weight."

Mr and Mrs Beasley put a thank you message in the Argus to everyone who had helped them in their hunt for Barney.

"We are absolutely over the moon that he's back," said a delighted Mrs Beasley.