Giles Coren and Mo Tenzing

AN Amazon driver had to make a special delivery after finding Giles Coren’s cat in the back of his van.

Mo Tenzing, the writer and TV presenter’s wander­ing feline friend, was discovered more than 20 miles from home last Monday. The cat no doubt has a very happy – and calm – life living with Mr Coren in Kentish Town.

But, by The Times columnist’s own admission, he does go missing a lot. On this occasion, he had got as far afield as Hemel Hempstead.

“An Amazon driver, called Emilian, who was delivering in Kentish Town that afternoon, got home at the end of his shift and was followed into his house by a small cat expecting supper,” Mr Coren wrote in his column yesterday (Wednesday).

“Mo loves cars and had clearly jumped in and taken a ride.”

The driver had phoned a number on Mo’s collar and found himself talking to Mr Coren, who was the host of ITV’s quiz show 500 Questions.

“An hour later, this lovely man arrived at my door, with Mo on his shoulder, absolutely refusing to take even £40 for petrol,” wrote Mr Coren, outlining his pet’s unexpected day out in Hertfordshire.

The driver then made a joke about not delivering the cat in a brown paper package the size of giraffe – a gag about how Amazon parcels up the items sent out each day.

Mr Coren said his family had normally stopped worrying about the where­abouts of Mo, who he described as “well known locally”.

The cat is named after both footballer Mo Salah and mountaineer Tenzing Norgay and has regularly been mentioned in his columns. Last July, he went missing for three weeks.

SEE ALSO RISE IN MISSING CATS FUELLED BY ‘KEEPERS LOOKING FOR COMPANY DURING LOCKDOWN’

Mr Coren and his wife, the writer Esther Walker, were later told that somebody had tried to change the details on his identifying microchip and that he had been “rehomed” to a woman living in a tower block.

Ms Walker later wrote about the incident with the view that someone had assumed their friendly cat had been seen in the street and considered a stray.

“But rather than handing him into a vet, he was unilaterally rehomed,” she said, describing an exchange between the finder and the new “owner” arranged on Facebook. No money had changed hands.

The cat was returned to them when it was explained what had happened.

Last week, the New Journal wrote about the rise of “keepers” during the coronavirus lockdown – people who take in cats that they assume do not have a home.

Pet detectives said they believe that loneliness during the national shutdown had led to an increase in this kind of official adoption.

They are still looking for Nora, a Norwegian forest cat missing from her home in Belsize Park