This is the heart-stopping moment a man uses a plastic shopping bag attached to a pole to try and fish a stray kitten from a window ledge.

The man, identified only as Mr Li, said that the kitten was a stray that he had decided to give a home to. But it had scratched his wife and he therefore put it in a cage inside his flat so it could first get used to its surroundings.

The man lives with his wife and children in Xinyang, which is a city in Henan province, in the People’s Republic of China.

One morning, he and his kids opened the cage door, but they were not prepared for the kitten suddenly dashing out and leaping from the open window.

Luckily, the feline managed to jump onto the window ledge at the last minute, but it was unable to go anywhere else from there, and it was even struggling to turn around on the narrow platform.

The video of the rescue, which has gone viral, shows the heart-stopping attempt by the man to catch the kitten by using the shopping bag and the pole to create a type of rudimentary fishing net.

On several occasions, the cat almost falls from the ledge as Mr Li attempts to put it into the bag, but eventually he manages to get the scared cat into the bag and quickly brings it back to the window, where he then shoves it back inside for good measure, to make sure he does not get scratched.

He said he realised after the incident that the kitten could not be domesticated, and he was also worried it might pull the same stunt again, and so he released it back onto the streets.