Photograph by Pascal
A woman has been jailed for killing her pet kitten by “cooking” it in the microwave as punishment because she believed it had attacked her pet goldfish.
Laura Cunliffe, 23, put her cat Mowgli into the microwave and turned it on for five minutes in September 2013.
Cunliffe, or Hoyland, near Barnsley, pleaded guilty to causing unnecessary suffering to the cat, which died around 90 minutes after spending 60 seconds in the microwave in September 2013.
At Barnesly Magistrates Court, Cunliffe was sentenced to 14 weeks in jail and banned from keeping animals for life, with district judge John Foster saying:
“This was an act of utterly horrendous cruelty on your part on an animal that, as far as I could see, had come to trust you and rely on you”
Cunliffe has longstanding mental health issues, and has been sectioned under the Mental Health Act 20 times according to her lawyer.
An RSPCA spokeswoman said:
“This was such a sad case and clearly this poor kitten would have suffered terribly over a prolonged period of time.
Sentencing is a matter for the courts but we hope this means other animals will not have to suffer in the future in this way.”
