A cat has gone from being a stray to being coveted by the Communist party and eventually memorialized with a statue outside a Russian hockey arena.

Back in December 2014, stray cat ‘Matroskin’ wandered into a fish shop at the Vladivostok International Airport and proceeded to get into the display case and consume 63,000 rubles (£740) worth of squid and fish.

While the unnamed cat briefly vanished, he became a national hero. Sensing viral fame as his way out of the airport, he eventually showed up again.

The Communist Party offered him a home in St. Petersburg.

Sergey Malinkovich, the head of St Petersburg Communists, told The Siberian Times: “This cat is a Robin Hood or a Che Gevara. She sneaked into a glamorous Rybnyi Ostrovok shop and ate everything there, because only the bourgeois and foreigners can buy food there.

“But the cat is from our working family. The red whiskered, four-legged, Bolshevik decided to strike and sabotage the plans of these bourgeois.

“Walking around the airport for years, she could see how ordinary airport workers were eating, how passengers couldn’t even afford to buy a tea in a cafe, and how transit passengers were chewing their humble sandwiches.

“Yet there was salmon, lobsters, imperialistic prawns… She was eating them and purring for all of us.”

He added: “I’m asking Piter’s cats (St Petersburg’s cats) to follow the example of the Far Eastern revolutionary.”

The cat was then adopted by the local hockey team – Admiral Vladivostok of the KHL. The cat was named “Матроске” or “Matroskin,” which was the name of a cat from the 1978 animated film “Трое из Простоквашино.” (Three from Prostokvashino)

From there Matroskin lived at the arena until he died on Tuesday.

Now it has been announced that tatroskin will be immortalised with a statute outside the team’s arena. The team hopes the statue will become one of the city’s attractions.