Stunned Robert Gray, 56, found the strange looking artefact in his loft where it had sat for the past 50 years.

Robert thought the feline-shaped “pile of rags” was a stuffed cat so he took it to a vets for an X-ray.

But incredibly the series of images revealed the outline of a perfectly preserved ancient puss – complete with face, ears, spine and brain.

Experts at the Royal Cornwall Museum have now verified the remarkable find as a 2,000-year-old Egyptian mummy – worth £2,000. [$3,105USD]

Robert, an actor and B&B owner, of Portscatho, Cornwall, inherited the bandaged artefact when his father died in 1984 but assumed it was a fake.

He said: “My father acquired the cat in the 1970s as a token of thanks from a museum. It’s been in the loft languishing there for 50 years.