At 25 years old Phoebe really is the cat’s whiskers

Nine lives is a good innings in anyone’s language. But this furry feline is set to break a world record after pussy-footing her way to within a whisker of the quarter of a century mark.

Snow-white kitty Phoebe is poised to be crowned the world’s oldest living cat when she turns 25 in August — the equivalent of 117 human years.

And her longevity is all the more remarkable given that she wasn’t expected to live more than a few weeks when she was adopted as a sickly seven-week-old kitten by her proud owner, Caroline O’Riordan, in Brighton in 1989.