Maybe he's not very curious. Or perhaps he had more than nine lives.

Whatever the reason, at the age of 27, Mischief is one old cat.

A whisker away from officially entering the record books as the UK's longest living domestic feline, he is still purring along nicely.

Mischief  -  with an age of 127 in cat years  -  is almost certainly the oldest living cat in Britain, and quite possibly the oldest in the world.

His owners put his longevity down to pure laziness.

'People ask what we're feeding him to keep him going so long  - they think it must be a diet of vitamins or something,' Donna Thorne, 33, said.

'But we don't do anything special, he is just a greedy and lazy boy who will eat anything that he can get his paws on.

'When he was younger he was fairly active, but now he doesn't move much unless food is involved. I suppose his laziness has ultimately preserved him.'

Mischief is fed dry cat food every day and pouches of meat every other day.