A schoolgirl was devastated after a python broke into her family's kitchen and ate her pet cat.

Darunda Nattayavatin, 11, was looking for her three-year-old moggie named 'Ho Jun' after it failed to respond to her calls at the family home in Pathum Thani, Thailand, on April 3.

The youngster walked into the kitchen and screamed when she saw the 12ft long python sprawled on the counter with a large bulge in its tummy.

Darunda's mother came running into the room and called the emergency services who arrived and confirmed that the deadly repltile had swallowed little 'Ho Jun' whole.

Kanchisa, the mother, said: ‘It’s so heartbreaking. My daughter was searching around the house and garden for our cat and then I heard her scream.

‘When I saw what happened, I screamed too and my girl seriously panicked about her cat. We saw the snake's big belly and realised where Ho Jun was.

‘I couldn’t do anything but hold my daughter and comfort her until the rescuers came to take the snake away from our house.’

Kanchisa said that Ho Jun was an adopted three-year-old male cat that the family loved after rescuing him from the streets in Nakhon Ratchasima province in the north of the country.

The family loved dressing him up with cute costumes and the grandmother bought him a set of kitty cowboy clothes, which he is pictured wearing.

Darunda's father, Daomanee, said: ‘I was taking a shower when I heard my wife and my daughter screaming so I went to check.

‘I was terrified seeing a python with something in its stomach. I believe it came through a hole in the roof.

‘My daughter is heartbroken. She still misses Ho Jun.’

A kind neighbour has now offered to give the young girl a pedigree kitten worth thousands of dollars to replace the cat that was eaten by the snake.

Volunteer firemen caught the python and took it outside in a sack before driving it away to be detained at their office before it is released back into the wild more than 100 miles away.