B&B Owner Robert Gray Discovers 2,000-Year-Old Mummified Cat in Attic

We've seen plenty of weird things discovered in homes: dozens of exotic animals, stashes of marijuana, four escaped inmates. This one's another crazy story to add to the list: a man found a 2,000-year-old mummified cat from Egypt in the attic of his home in Cornwall, England.

Britain's South West News Service reports that bed & breakfast owner Robert Gray, 56, thought the peculiar, bandaged, feline-shaped object was a stuffed cat -- so he took it to the vet for an X-ray. He was shocked to discover that his strange attic find, inherited from his Egyptologist father, was actually a "perfectly preserved ancient puss," complete with its face, ears, spine and brain.

"My father acquired the cat in the 1970s as a token of thanks from a museum," Gray told SWNS. "It's been in the loft languishing there for 50 years."

The mummified cat was verified by the experts at the Royal Cornwall Museum (Gray is pictured above with the mummy and museum curator Jane Marley). They reveal that the rare object is worth 2,000 pounds (around $3,100). X-rays of the ancient feline reveal that it was a "prized pet," rather than a sacrifice to the ancient Egyptian gods. (Ancient Egyptians were known to sacrifice animals as offerings to the gods, but they would also mummify pets, in hopes that their beloved animal companions would follow them into the afterlife).

"History was made today," Gray told a community newspaper, This Is Cornwall, of his unusual find. "It's something that has lived with me for most of my life and it's revealed itself today."

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