Atif Mehmood, a Pakistani salesman based in Dubai, saved a  pregnant cat stuck on the second-floor balcony of a residential building in Deira, the commercial hub of Dubai.

Atif, along with a Moroccan and an Indian man, spread a bedsheet and caught the cat after it jumped from the second floor.

The video shows the three men holding up the bedsheet for the cat, who initially hesitates, but then jumps into it and is saved.

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Viewed over 1.1 million times, the video caught the eye of the ruler of Dubai who took to Twitter and asked people to help identify the “unsung heroes” so he could thank them.

“I got a call from the police and someone asked me, ‘Did you save a cat?’,” Mehmood told Arab News. “I got scared and said yes, I did, and then they asked me to visit the police station.”

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He said he entered the police station to cheers and applause. Three days later, he was told he had been awarded AED50,000 (Rs 2,172,833) by the Dubai government.

“I did not believe it at first,” he said, “but it has become a reality.”

Mehmood, who is single, has already spent most of the reward money to buy a car for his father and help out his brother. He now plans to use the rest of the cash to try to set up a business in Dubai