Helen Swan asked staff at Best Friends Vet in Broad Street, Dagenham, to leave her moggy’s corpse for her after she was put down.

But the 60-year-old was devastated to hear that it was too late to get Britney back after a “communication error” meant she was cremated by mistake.

“I knew she was unwell so I took her to the vet and they said she wasn’t going to make it,” said Helen, of Oval Road South, Dagenham. “The lady asked if I wanted them to cremate her and I clearly said no, I want to deal with her myself, with my son, because it’s his cat too.”

Helen said she wanted to arrange for the feline to be sent off to a different crematorium where she felt the process would be handled more personally and she would be able to keep the ashes.

But the mum-of-one wasn’t able to arrange the procedure straight away so left the cat with the vet in the meantime.

“When I phoned and said I wanted to collect her body a woman on the phone told me it was too late,” she said. “I couldn’t grasp it for a minute. They told me there had been a massive communication error and the cat had been cremated.

“I was beyond upset and was screaming down the phone. They just ripped 14-and-a-half years from me like that.

“I cut a bit of fur off her in the vets and that’s all I’ve got left of her now. I wanted to keep her ashes with her dad’s but they’ve taken her away from me.

“I’ll never get another cat now, I love animals but I can’t go through this again. They’ve ripped something away from me.”

Kelly Smyth, the southern regional manager at Best Friends Vet, said they have offered to pay for a memorial of Helen’s choice.

“We were extremely saddened to have learnt of this matter, [which was] the result of a breakdown in communication,” she added.