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MPs on the campaign trail used to seek out photo opportunities such as kissing babies but now it seems to have progressed to carrying out heroic pet rescues.

Ellesmere Port and NestonLabour MP Justin Madders was on a break from talking to voters ahead of the June 8 election on Thursday (April 27) when he sprang into action after spotting a cat stuck up a tree.

A picture was soon tweeted of the MP atop a ladder extricating the wayward moggie which may have climbed the tree to escape the media frenzy over Brexit and now the General Election.

The former lawyer, who used to work as an employment solicitor for Chester-based Walker Smith Way, wrote on Twitter: “Going up a tree to rescue a stranded cat was not in the campaign grid for today.”

The shadow health minister, who is married to Cheshire West and Chester Labour councillor Nicole Meardon (Sutton ward), later explained the full story.

"It was our cat up a neighbour's tree. I was walking back with Nicole when we heard this loud miaowing and saw her up the tree," said father-of-three and cat owner of three Mr Madders, who lives in Little Sutton.

Nicole held the ladder as he went up the tree but admitted it was 'quite a struggle' and that it was really their 15-year-old son Samuel who finally managed to grab the cat, named 'Delilah' (although he assisted).

He later joked: "It would be a cat-astrophe if we get another Tory government so please vote Labour on June 8."

Mr Madders will no doubt relay his experience to feline loving Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who last year expressed fears his own pet cat El Gato is ‘a bit of a Tory’ after displaying ‘disappointing individualism and lack of concern for others’.