PARISHIONERS are helping in the search for their new parish priest's cat which has gone missing after only a few days in its new home.

Laus Tibi, the ten-year-old tabby, has done a bunk since moving to Pickering from Acomb in York with her owner, Father Bill East.

Her disappearance has plunged his pet back into the limelight, a spot she occupied when she was just a kitten and got lost in the organ pipes of his former church in Sunderland.

That escapade made it to the pages of the News of the World, no less, and Father Bill said that since then his beloved pet had never ventured inside the doors of a church.

He said he had been looking for his new kitten all around his church and had finally found her when he heard a noise from the organ pipes. He turned it on and pulled out all the stops.

"The next thing I knew a large ball of fluff came flying over my head. It destroyed her faith. I couldn't get her to come back to church again."

Laus Tibi - the name means praise to you in Latin - remained a family pet and travelled with them to Father Bill's new job at Our Lady's RC Church at Acomb six years ago, after he switched from the Anglican to the Roman Catholic church.

He said: "She was happy in Acomb and she didn't like moving to Pickering - I don't know why because it's a lovely place.

"It could be that my predecessor had a dog and maybe she could smell it. The second night we were here - Sunday night - I left a window open in the bedroom and she seems to have jumped out of it."

He said his son, Charles, 26, was even coming up from London to offer a reward for the cat's safe return.

Laus Tibi is a long-haired tabby with a white bib and paws. Anyone with information should telephone 01751 472727.

Picture - Father Bill East and his wife, Betty, who have lost their cat