Liverpool’s Premier League match against Tottenham on Monday was brought to an unusual halt by the arrival of a cat on the field of play at Anfield.

The grey and white moggy sauntered on to the pitch 11 minutes into the contest and ran around happily for a minute (as UK web users can see in the video that should autoplay in the picture box).

The cat quickly became an internet celebrity and within hours was cracking football jokes to its over 24,000 followers on Twitter.

However, "The Anfield Cat" is far from the first animal to hit the sports headlines.

Here's the nine others that make up our Top 10 animals who stole the sporting headlines.

Pickles the dog, 1966 World Cup

England's World Cup-winning campaign of 1966 got off to an appalling start before the tournament even began: a week after the reigning champions Brazil had handed the Jules Rimet trophy over to England, it was stolen while on exhibition at Central Hall in Westminster.

Brazil were understandably furious, claiming that such an incident would never have happened in their country, where football was seen as too important for thieves to target the iconic trophy.

Luckily, an unlikely saviour arrived in the form of a dog called Pickles, who swooped in to track down the trophy in the nick of time.

Pickles discovered it discarded at the bottom of a hedge, presumably while looking for a suitable place to cock his leg.

The rest is history: Bobby Moore led England to summer glory, and Brazil won it for keeps in 1970 after their third triumph.

The trophy was stolen again in 1983 - in Brazil - and has not been seen since, rather undermining the Brazilian indignation of 17 years earlier.

Paul the Octopus

In years to come, the average football fan in the street will probably remember three things about the 2010 World Cup. First, Nigel de Jong's astonishing kung-fu kick on Xabi Alonso. Second, Frank Lampard's 'goal' against Germany and the general anarchy in the England camp. And third - and most memorable of all - Paul the Octopus, the cephalopod who became a global sensation after successfully predicting matches at the World Cup by choosing between two feed boxes which bore the flags of the two nations involved in the next match.

Paul correctly predicted the winner of all seven of Germany's matches at this summer's World Cup in South Africa, before then correctly choosing Spain over the Netherlands before the final.

Sadly Paul died peacefully in his sleep aged two just a few months after the World Cup. R.I.P Paul!

Sawgrass's evil seagull, Players Championship, 1998

American journeyman golfer Steve Lowery was initially pretty pleased with himself when playing the infamous 17th hole on the TPC Stadium course: he hit a beautiful shot that was right into the heart of the island green on the tricky par-3.

But a passing seagull had other ideas: it picked up Lowery's ball, rolled it across the green with its beak, then picked it up, flew away, and dropped it in the lake.

Luckily for Lowery, the rules of golf legislated for such avian villainy: since the ball had stopped before he picked it up, he was allowed to replace the ball on the green.

The Visakhapatnam cricket stadium bees

The ACA-VDCA Stadium in Visakhapatnam, India, is one of international cricket's newest venues, having been built in 2003.

There's just one problem with it: there are roughly a dozen bee colonies on the stadium premises. Some are in trees on the site, while others are in the rafters of the stand - but all are very much alive and each honeycomb is teeming with flying beasts.

When they decide to come out and play, the players and match officials have no option but to lie flat on the ground until the swarm passes, while spectators can end up running around the stands trying to avoid getting stung. The first ever one-day international at the ground, between India and Pakistan in 2005, was affected by a swarm, and at one match the TV commentators were hemmed into their glass box as the bees surrounded the press cubicle.

Indian newspaper The Hindu reported that the prohibitive cost of removing the honeycombs - a highly specialised job - has so far prevented stadium owners from having the bees moved on.

The Highbury squirrel, Arsenal v Villarreal, Champions League semi-final, April 2006

The highlight of Arsenal's final European match at Highbury was not Kolo Toure's 41st minute goal which eventually put the Gunners into their first Champions League final.

It was the grey squirrel which ran onto the pitch a couple of minutes into the game.

Camels stop play, Tasmania, 1984

A cricket match between Tasmanian arch-rivals Launceston and Old Suttonians was interrupted in the most bizarre circumstances imaginable back in 1984: a caravan of camels charged onto the cricket square.

The match had to be halted to allow the rounding-up of the animals, who had escaped from a nearby circus - but the peace didn't last long. The camels broke back into the match three more times.

The canine pitch invader, England v Brazil, World Cup quarter-final, June 1962

When a stray dog ran on to the pitch in Vina del Mar, Chile, during England's World Cup quarter-final against Brazil, it took England striker Jimmy Greaves to catch the dog and carry him off the pitch.

The cheer Greaves received was a rare bright moment on a bad afternoon: not only did England go on to lose 3-1, the dog also peed on the Tottenham striker as he handed him over to officials.

The Wimbledon pigeons

Some, like Mike Tyson, believe pigeons are beautiful and fascinating creatures. Others, like anybody who has been bullseyed by one of the flying rats as they walk across Trafalgar Square, may not concur.

But everyone can agree that having flocks of pigeons flying around could be a disaster for a tennis tournament, which is why the organisers of Wimbledon spend a fortune every year trying to keep the birds away.

In 2000, the All England Club employed a hawk called Hamish to chase the pigeons away, even equipping the bird of prey with its own laminated pass to the tournament.

But in 2008 the hawk patrol proved not to be enough, and a team of marksmen were hired to shoot the birds. It kept the tournament pigeon-free - but landed the club in hot water with animal welfare groups.

Dove takes on baseball - and loses, March 2001

Baseball star Randy Johnson garnered unwanted headlines back in 2001 when he accidentally killed a dove during a game.

The Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher threw his best fastball at Calvin Murray of the San Francisco Giants - but as he did so, a dove swooped down into the ground at top speed.

Sadly for the bird, its high-speed divebomb took it exactly into the path of Johnson's 95mph fast ball. The result? The bird was killed in an astonishing explosion of feathers.

"I'm sitting there waiting for it, and I'm expecting to catch the thing, and all you see is an explosion," said Diamondbacks' catcher Rod Barajas at the time. "It's crazy. There's still feathers down there."

Eurosport