Wood you believe it? Granddad builds his cat a house from 25,000 matchsticks

Mike Nunns, 71, spent more than 500 hours building the dream home for his cat Diesel, but admits the mollycoddled moggy still sleeps in his bed.

Mike built the luxury lodgings 100 matches at a time and it comes with a TV, window box, spacious bed and furniture - all built from matches.

The 13-year-old feline’s new pad is also fitted with a comfortable foam mattress, but still prefers to curl up on Mike’s bed.

The grandfather of ten, from Chesterfield, said: “She has had a couple of sleeps in it, but she still prefers my bed.

“Every morning I wake up with her asleep on me.”

Although his cat has shown indifference to his labour of love, Mike, who is also a dad-of-three and great granddad-of-four, has a passion for matchstick creations.

Over the last 12 years he has made around 30 clocks, jewellery boxes, windmills and many other handcrafted items.

He said: “It’s just a hobby of mine, I love it.

“You’ve got to have an awful lot of patience, though, as you can only stick around 100 matches down at a time.”

Mike starts off making his matchstick models by constructing templates out of thin cardboard, before sticking matches to each side.

He then sands them down before varnishing them and finally sticking all the templates together.

Mike said: “The first thing I made was a model aeroplane, which was from a kit.

“As soon as I’d built it I thought ‘I could make my own templates‘ and that was the start of it.”

His creations have been sold all over the world, including the US and Thailand.