Lucky the kitten picked the wrong place to sleep when she decided to curl up and sleep on an engine.

Staff at Budget Rent-a-Car in Lewes Road, Brighton, found the six-month-old kitten underneath the bonnet of a hire van on Wednesday.

They believe she may have crawled into the van and nestled in the engine looking for somewhere warm to sleep.

The driver returned the Transit van unaware she had been carrying an extra passenger.

Staff are unsure how long the black and white cat had been in the engine before she was discovered by one of the company's drivers.

Receptionist Trevor McInnes, 53, and driver Mark Axford, 49, who nicknamed her Lucky, came to the rescue and plucked her from the engine.

Mr McInnes said: "She is lucky to be alive and will definitely have lost at least a couple of her nine lives.

"She was petrified when we found her and didn't want to move. We managed to grab her and put her in a box in the office.

"She is only small and was clearly traumatised. We tried to give her some food but she wasn't interested. She has just been sitting watching people go back and forth. I'm watching her now and she is shaking.

"We don't know how she got in there. She may have crawled in last night or she may have been in there for five days when the van was rented out."

A colleague had mistaken the fluffy kitten, who wears a diamante-studded collar, for a fox when he lifted the van's bonnet.

Mr McInnes said: "One of the drivers came running into the office looking petrified. His face was white and he said he wasn't going back outside.

"When he opened the bonnet he had seen something move and thought it was a fox."

Mr McInnes is now trying to find the kitten's owner.

He said the driver who had rented the van was horrified when she heard the kitten had been on a tour of the city.

The van was parked in the Hampden Road area on Tuesday night so Mr McInnes believes Lucky may be from there.

He said: "She is a lovely little fluffy kitten and someone's cherished pet."

Debbie Campain from Cat Rescue in Fairlight Avenue, Telscombe Cliffs, has been looking after Lucky.

Mrs Campain said: She is in a foster home at the moment.

"She's a lovely kitten and is being very well looked after."