With his black colouring and patch of white around the collar, Harvey the cat looks every inch the miniature vicar.

The moggy, who turned up at St Margaret's Church in Rottingdean two years ago, has made himself so much at home that he regularly turns up for weddings and stretches out in front of the pulpit during services.

Father Martin Morgan, parish priest for Rottingdean, said: "We seem to have been adopted by the cat, who just turned up more than a year ago and has now taken over.

"He wanders about during church services and stretches out in front of me in church and kind of tends to run things these days.

"He even comes to weddings and half way through comes walking down the aisle. He's quite a character.

"I don't know where he sleeps at night but he's always at the church door in the morning, waiting to be fed."

Harvey is so popular with people in the village, Rottingdean author Elvi Rhodes has teamed up with school children to write a book about him.

Holy Harvey the Church Cat is the result of a collaboration between the best selling author and pupils from St Margaret's Church of England School.

Mrs Rhodes, one of whose best-known works is Spring Music, said: "The idea for the book came about when he took up residence in the church .

"The headmistress asked me if I would get involved in a writing project with the children and then we went one step further by writing a book with them about Harvey.

"I have been going into school twice a week and going through with the children all the things that cats like and don't like. The children have written it as if they are speaking for Harvey, who is quite happy in his home in Gorham Avenue, where I think he lives.

"They wrote that, being conceited with ideas above his station, Harvey saw the church and thought 'this is the home for me'.

"Ninety per cent of the time he goes to services and sits in the bishop's chair. He is a character in that even though he lives at a home in the village, he has made the church his home and even has his own cushions.

"They've written comments and drawings, which are absolutely wonderful and I have knitted it together with my own words."

Mrs Rhodes wrote her first novel in 1985 and is now working on her 17th book. The collaboration between herself and the schoolchildren will be self-

published and will come out in the autumn.