HILARIOUS footage has emerged showing the moment cops seized a cute cat trying to enter a prison with crack cocaine taped to its body.

The grey and white moggy was spotted climbing over a fence into a jail in Costa Rica, with the drugs wrapped around its belly.

Footage released by the sun-drenched country’s Ministry of Justice and Peace shows two prison guards stopping the cat, thwarting an inmate’s plot to smuggle drugs into jail.

While one holds it firmly but gently, the other uses scissors to cut the two packages of drugs loose-wrapped in black plastic and stuck fast with industrial tape.

Inside the packets, officers found 235g of marijuana and nearly 70g of crack cocaine paste.

The package also included sheets of paper for rolling joints.

It is understood that inmates had befriended and fed the cat with scraps so it would return to their cell.

A drug dealer is understood to have tapped the package outside the prison before sending the moggy inside.

Prison officials and police are investigating the case and say the cat has been handed over to the National Animal Health Service.

A Justice Ministry spokesperson said: “This is a new method that shows the creativity and cruelty of those trying to break the law.”

It is just one of the unique ways criminals and drug dealers try to smuggle narcotics inside prison.

Local media reports that since 2015, prison officials in Costa Rica have intercepted at least seven attempts to traffic contraband into prisons using cats, dogs and carrier pigeons.

A few years ago, a pigeon was caught smuggling 178 ecstasy pills to a prison in Kuwait in a tiny backpack that was taped to its body.

Cops tracked the bent bird as it flew from neighbouring Iraq and swooped as it crossed the border.

Amazingly, it was wearing a tiny pouch that appears to have been taped or sewed onto its back and contained 178 pills, reports Al Arabiya.

It wasn’t immediately clear exactly what kind of pills the feathered fiend was packing.

In 2015, guards at a Costa Rican prison caught a pigeon flying drugs into the slammer.

The bird, carrying 14 grams of cocaine and cannabis, was spotted flying close to the jail in a bid by smugglers to sneak the drugs in.

Police in San Jose, Costa Rica, captured the bird on a patio outside and hauled it in before it made it over the medium-security prison’s walls.

A picture of the bird with a cable strapped to its leg to stop it escaping was posted by officers appealing for information about the incident.