Until he was eight months old, Parsley lived the life of a fairly ordinary house cat.

He was a handsome ginger tom with long white whiskers who belonged to a very nice lady called Fiona Campbell-Smith in the small town of Oban on Scotland's west coast.

Parsley ate and stretched and slept wherever he wanted.

"He was strangely calm for a kitten," Fiona recalls thoughtfully. "With hindsight, the signs were there of what was to come."

Parsley adored attention. So much so, he began to seek it elsewhere.

Everywhere else, in fact.

Down to Rutherford's hairdressers to greet their clients, on to the electronics store to snooze atop their washing machine and back out onto the street to demand head-scratches from passers-by.

"When he first disappeared I didn't know where he was and I was absolutely frantic," says Fiona.

"I reported him missing at the vets and found out he had been up Pulpit Hill at the viewing tower."

When Parsley's wanderlust became too much, Fiona, 56, finally gave up and invested in a GPS tracker for his collar to get an insight into her cat's travels.

The results were remarkable. Apparently Glasgow-born Parsley likes tourist hotspots like McCaig's Tower, though he is not averse to spending time with the locals, especially if they're in the pub.

He's particularly partial to the Balmoral.

"He went to two church services around Easter, one at the Congregational Church and then at St John's Cathedral, before heading straight to the Balmoral bar," says Fiona.

"I managed to catch up with him there."

Not that it is always easy for Fiona to reach him, particularly on the days when she is without a car.

"I send a taxi to pick him up then instead," she says.

Parsley is actually a great lover of cars and is a common sight on the roads around the town, sprawled peacefully across Fiona's dashboard.

On nice days, Parsley, his ginger mane warmed by the sunshine, patrols the town from his home with Fiona right down to the coast, posing for photos with his constituents along the way.

"He does pop in every now and then for a fish supper," says John Stewart from the George Street Fish and Chip shop.

He also likes to pay a visit to Oban distillery, Atlantis Leisure Centre and once took a nap at Saint Saviour's beauty salon.

"He took it upon himself to jump up on the bed and curl up," says beauty therapist Dawn McBay.

"He's the most laid back cat I've ever met. I've heard he went for bed and breakfast at a neighbour's one day after he just decided to stay the night."

When the weather is less agreeable, Parlsey makes house calls to those most likely to offer him a comfy seat and a head scratch.

Now at age two he is a local celebrity: Parsley, the 'Cat-Minister of Scotland'.

A friendly Maine Coon, Parsley has more than 2,500 adoring fans from all over the world who follow his exploits on his Facebook page.

The friendly feline has almost 1000 fans in the USA but his other friends are spread out around the globe, from Argentina to Australia, New Zealand to Mexico, Pakistan to South Africa, with many followers around the UK too.

He has also penned a letter for newspaper The National in response to the feline fallout of Downing Street cats Larry and Palmerston.

Some urban cat owners choose not to let their pets out, to avoid disease or violence. But the outdoors have been pretty good to Parsley, so long as he doesn't come across any trains (which he's scared of) or rain (which makes him resemble a soggy ginger mop).

"He really doesn't like getting wet," says Fiona.

"One day I saw on his tracker that he was heading towards the Regent Hotel because they have a floral balcony he quite likes to sit on, elbow out watching the sea.

"All of a sudden there was this terrible downpour but just as I thought about going to rescue him, he just double backed on himself and went to the pub instead."

Those who have met Parsley agree that nothing ever seems to bother him and that he has "impeccable manners".

Though his party lifestyle can get a bit demanding at times for Fiona.

"It's like living with a teenager," she says.

"Last Thursday I had to get up at 3am to go and get him because he was in the local backpackers with two Spanish men."

While she is happy for Parsley to keep up his wandering ways which he loves, Fiona does worry for his safety.

"I've set up a large boundary for him on my GPS tracker which only sends an alert to my phone when he travels too far out of it near to traffic," she says.

Then, Fiona scoots to her car and pops out to pick up the troublesome lad.

"He struts about, loving himself and loving the attention," she says. "He doesn't want cuddles all the time just to be in the thick of it."

Parsley's wanderings have taken him so far, he has a personal record of covering 10km in a day.

It's so much walking, in fact, his vet has had to put him on a special high calorie diet to make sure he doesn't lose too much weight from his adventuring.

"He's not normal," says Fiona, "He's definitely not a normal cat.

"But he's only not normal in the very best of ways."