It can be hard and expensive to fly with pets. Even more so if our beloved furry kids don’t travel well. We all want the best for our pets and want to make sure they are safe and well cared for while traveling. This isn’t always easy, especially when they are in the cargo hold of a plane.

So it’s not surprising that some pet owners will go to pretty extreme lengths to keep their four-legged babies away from there.

Take the Russian Mikhail Galin as an example. Mikhail recently went viral on social media for sneaking his cat onto a flight, even though the airline told him his cat was too heavy.

After staying in Riga, Mikhail was going back to his home in Vladivostok. But his trip was messed up when the airline staff wouldn’t let him bring his cat, Viktor, with him in the cabin.

Mikhail was told that Viktor, who weighed 22 pounds, was 5 pounds over the limit and would have to travel in the cargo hold because of this.

Mikhail wouldn’t let it happen. He knew from the past that Viktor didn’t do well in transit and that the strange environment and changing air pressure would make him feel bad.

So he came up with a complicated but easy-to-understand plan. Galin asked for help on social media by asking if anyone had a cat like Viktor that they could lend him. He found a cat that looks almost exactly like Victor but weighs a lot less.

Then, at check-in, he switched the two cats and gave the cat he had borrowed back to its owner. He was then able to get on the plane with Viktor in his hands.

Galin broke airline rules with his cat-swapping act, which was caught on surveillance video at the airport.

The airline decided to punish Mikhail by taking away 400,000 miles from his account and kicking him out of the frequent flyer program.

Read people’s reactions below: