A middle-aged Russian man suffering from diabetes and poor blood clotting tragically lost his life after being scratched on the leg by his pet cat.

On November 22, Dmitry Ukhin, a 55-year-old man from the Kirishi district, in Russia’s Leningrad region, went looking for his pet cat Styopka around the neighborhood. The feline had an independent streak and liked nothing more than to walk around the neighborhood freely. Eyewitnesses later told police that Ukhin found his beloved pet and took it home with him, but couldn’t really explain why or how the cat scratched his leg so badly that he bled to death in a matter of minutes.

It was around 11 p.m. when a desperate Dmitry Ukhin called his next-door neighbor to tell him that he was bleeding profusely after being scratched on his leg by his cat. The neighbor tried to help the 55-year-old man, but he apparently suffered from diabetes and had blood clotting problems, so he called emergency services. Unfortunately, by the time an ambulance arrived, they could only confirm the man’s death.

“Around 11 p.m., a man called 112 to report that his friend was bleeding from his leg due to a torn vein. The doctors who arrived only confirmed the man’s death, which the police received a telephone message about,” a police spokesperson told Kosomolskaya Pravda, adding that “there was definitely no crime there.”

An investigation into Dmitry Ukhin’s bizarre death will try to explain why the cat attacked his master, and how it was able to scratch deeply enough to sever a vein or an artery. In a photo posted on Ukhin’s social media, it’s clear to see that Styopka is a fairly large cat, but to have large enough claws to strike a vein is still unusual for a house cat.

Ukhin’s wife told investigators that Styopka was a harmless cat that was very attached to her late owner, so she can’t imagine her scratching him to death.