On Oct. 4, 2018, Gennady Shcherbakov was drunkenly sitting in his apartment building’s stairwell when his neighbors called the police with a noise complaint against him.

A Muscovite faces up to five years in prison for attacking a policeman with a cat last year, the Baza Telegram channel reported Wednesday.

When an officer arrived to tell him to go home, Shcherbakov grabbed a nearby cat and shoved it into the policeman's face. The cat reportedly grabbed onto the officer's face with its claws, badly scratching him.

Shcherbakov spent the rest of the night in a jail cell. It's not clear whether the cat was hurt during the altercation.

More than a year later, authorities have opened a criminal case against Shcherbakov on charges of violence against police, Baza reported.

Shcherbakov denied attacking the officer with the cat, saying it jumped on the policeman on its own, Baza reported. If found guilty, Shcherbakov would face up to five years in prison.

The cat is far from the first feline to become entangled in Russian crime. In mid-October, a cat that was considered a key piece of evidence in a drug-smuggling case escaped from where it was being held in captivity south of Moscow.