A boy was reunited with his toy cat after thousands of people across the world helped his mum in an online appeal.

Five-year-old Nathan Hawkins, from the St Helier estate, was devastated when he accidently left his toy cat, Yoshi, on the 164 bus from Sutton towards Wimbledon on Wednesday, April 3.

His mum, Gemma Tombs, 38, put out an appeal on a social networking site, Twitter, but little did she know it would spread round the world - even being retweeted by a celebrity.

Tweets were sent from a far afield as Australia.

Miss Tombs said: "Nathan and his sister, Charlie, were really upset so I put an appeal out on twitter not expecting the response I got. 

"They both play with it and [Nathan] takes it everywhere.

"I got 2,158 retweets of my appeal worldwide, it trended, and not to mention retweets of retweets.

"Stephen Fry even retweeted - plus hundreds of messages from well wishers."

The next morning the family woke up to a tweet from TFL saying Yoshi was safe and well at the Colliers Wood bus garage.

They kept it quiet from Nathan and took him to the garage to surprise him with Yoshi.

Once reunited Nathan said: "I won’t do that again."

It turned out that when TFL caught wind of the appeal for Yoshi a message was sent out on the bus’s radios asking for his safe return.

Miss Tombs added: "I have a very happy little boy thanks to the kindness of everyone and I want to say a huge thank you."