Metro

Is this the face of a killer?

She just wanted a nip — but she got more than she bargained for.

A New Jersey woman has kicked up a feline fury at the 156-year-old McSorley’s Old Ale House, by filing a lawsuit claiming she was viciously attacked by the venerable bar’s pet cat and had to be hospitalized.

Cheryl Sibley, 53, of Hasbrouck Heights, says she suffered the mini-mauling in October 2009, according to papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court last week.

The suit doesn’t say exactly how the terrible tabby made a meal of Sibley.

But the woman claims the “live animal” attack left her with “serious injuries” that required medical care, the court papers state.

McSorley’s owner, Matthew Maher, says he is shocked by allegations about the bar’s peaceful house cat, Minnie the Second.

“I have no recollection of any attack,” he said. “If I would have known, I would have been the first to call her and say ‘Are you OK? Can I do anything for you?’ ”

Maher says he doesn’t allow Minnie to roam the sawdust floors during drinking hours, which is a violation of city law.

“[Sibley] must have been here after hours,” he said.

The East Village pub, whose famous patrons have included Harry Houdini, Woody Guthrie, Babe Ruth and numerous presidents, has a long history of keeping pet cats. For more than a century, multiple kitties have roamed the pub.

They were even the subject of the famous 1928 John Sloan painting, “McSorley’s Cats.”

According to one of the bar’s legends, when a cat is asleep in the window, it means Houdini’s spirit is present.

But history and legend haven’t kept McSorley’s from getting in trouble with the city Health Department for their catty ways.

In August, the bar was slapped with a $1,000 fine after a health inspector said he found a cat walking on the bar. Maher said he’s tried to comply with the law, and that during operating hours, Minnie is banished to another part of the building.

In recent years, the bar has suffered multiple pet tragedies.

In the summer of 2009, Minnie the First died. A few months later, another cat, Stinky, succumbed to “a broken heart,” one regular wrote on the bar’s Facebook page.

Maher says he’s not sure when Minnie the Second took up residence.

“There have always been cats at McSorley’s, and there always will,” Maher said.

Sibley and her attorney declined to comment.

Maher, a native of Ireland who has worked at McSorley’s since 1964 and has owned it since 1977, looked at the walls of yellowed newspaper clippings, framed pictures of presidents, and a wanted poster for John Wilkes Booth, then pointed to a mounted animal behind the bar.

“It may have been this beast over here,” he joked, pointing to a stuffed “jackalope,” a mythical antlered rabbit.

kathianne.boniello@nypost.com