This is the heartwarming moment a kind man uses a cardboard box and a piece of string to rescue a cat stranded in a canal.

The footage was filmed in Xuzhou, which is a major city in north-western Jiangsu province in eastern China, when the man had spotted the moggy stuck in the canal and unable to climb out.

The footage shows the cat in a shallow part of the canal soaking wet and clearly with no chance of climbing out of the concrete walled waterway.

But up above, the kindly man has secured a cardboard box and tied it to a piece of string, which he uses to slowly lower it down towards the cat.

The moggy is, at first, suspicious, but when it sees the cardboard box settling on the surface of the water, it decides to jump inside, and for a brief instant, it looks as if the cat will be tipped back into the water.

But then, the man manages to stabilise it and slowly raises the cat up to the pathway, where it then jumps to safety and runs off into the distance.

The man said that the young cat had apparently been in the water for quite some time and was unable to get out, and he had taken pity on it, worried it was going to die of cold and hunger.