An injured kitten was dramatically rescued following a six-hour search after apparently being trapped in the wheel arch of a car.

Kind-hearted cat lovers rallied to its aid after reports that the ginger kitten had fallen from one of the wheel arches of a car waiting at traffic lights on Henry Street in Church.

Despite being badly hurt, the female kitten had managed to drag herself into bushes at the side of the road.

Andy Richards, who runs local cat rescue Friends of the Cats, received a call on Sunday, August 13 alerting him to the incident. He searched for several hours but was unable to find it among the thick foliage, so put out a call on social media for helpers.

He said: “To my delight, about ten people responded and all arrived to help. The chances of finding something so tiny in such an inhospitable place were slim and, I must admit, I had given up and thought we weren’t going to find her.”

Couple Gemma and Stephen Bain were two of the people who answered the call-to-arms and were determined to locate the kitten, eventually finding her in the woodland after six hours of searching. The nine-week-old kitten was rushed for treatment and x-rays revealed she had a severely broken leg. She was put in for an operation at Vets4Pets in Accrington.

She will be adopted by her rescuers Gemma and Stephen once she can be discharged.

Andy said it was a ‘happy ending’ for the little cat, who they have fittingly named ‘Chance’.

He added: “This is one very lucky kitten. How she came to be in that car’s wheel arch and how far she’d travelled before she got thrown onto the road, we will never know.

“But she is lucky to have survived the adventure and lucky to have been found and rescued in the nick of time.”