A FOX cub was abandoned by his mother in Welling after a man chased her off thinking she had a puppy in her jaws.

Six-week-old Uno was just days old when a concerned homeowner in Bellegrove Road mistook him for one of his neighbour’s dogs and chased after him and his mother.

The vixen dropped her cub while escaping and Uno was recovered and handed in to veterinary nurse Shani Allen at the Oval Pet Centre on March 16.

The 25-year-old told News Shopper: "The man who found him was very nervous around any sort of animal anyway so he completely panicked.

"The neighbour who handed him in completely freaked out when we told her it was a fox and she couldn’t get rid of him quickly enough."

Like all fox cubs baby Uno looked very much like a baby puppy with his dark brown fur and screwed-up eyes which only open once foxes reach three weeks old.

Ms Allen says she and colleague Stacey White would have loved to have kept him – but neither could face getting up in the night to feed him every two hours.

She said: "They are very cute which is what adds to people wanting to pick them up because they do look like puppies.

"We couldn’t take Uno back to where he was found because he was too young and his mum might not have come back for him."

Uno has been recovering from his ordeal at his new home at the Willow Wildlife Centre in Chislehurst which has been run for 22 years by volunteers Pat Williams, 69, and her husband Eddie, 74.

Mrs Williams chose Uno’s name as he is the first of four abandoned cubs she and Eddie have received so far this year at their home in Walden Avenue.

She said: "He’s beginning to look like a fox now and he’s perfectly healthy it’s just that he’s not with his mum.

"She could do a far better job than me but we are doing the best we can and he’s thriving and doing well.

"He’s very alert and he wants to get down and start running about."

Mrs Williams did have to feed Uno during the night for the first few weeks of his life, which she called a "bags under the eyes job".

But the bushy-tailed little one will be ready to move out of Chislehurst to a larger release pen by the end of July before finding his own territory and integrating back into the wild.