One of the great injustices of this world is that cats – everyone’s favourite feline pet – don’t come in a wide enough range of colours to be used as fully functioning fashion accessories.

For one Russian author, the frustration of not having a luminous pink cat to accompany her to a party of the same colour theme was clearly too much, so she came up with the ingenious solution: she would paint the cat.

We know what you’re thinking, ‘what a flawless plan, I’m going to go buy a tin of paint and decorate my own cat right now’. But stop, because unfortunately the home made cat-dying experiment had cat-astrophic consequences. That’s right, it tragically backfired and the dyed cat died.

Lena Lenina’s poor kitten, in an attempt to lick himself (yes, HIMSELF, as if the whole thing wasn’t cruel enough!) clean of his garish new paint job, ingested so much of the pink stuff that he lost not one but all of his nine lives, rendering him dead.

Unsurprisingly, Lenina, who works as a writer, has been widely criticised for the whole thing. However, she claims that her vet actually told her that it would be “beneficial” to paint the cat pink.

She said: “The pink colour was especially chosen for its healing properties and also strengthens the cat’s hair. My vet told me it was a beneficial addition to him.”

So the fact that the cat was taken to a ‘pink party’ shortly after being painted is a lucky coincidence because it was in fact recoloured for medicinal reasons. Phew.

An online petition has been launched demanding the local police to investigate the incident for animal cruelty charges.