Heartless Stephanie Curwen, 24, encouraged her dog to jump up at a tiny cat until it fell off the high fence it was sitting off. The six month old kitten, Regi, was then mauled to death by the dog.
Today the owners of Regi slammed the court’s decision to allow Curwen to avoid jail after she pleaded guilty to causing an animal to fight and causing unnecessary suffering to an animal.
Curwen was handed a 24 week prison sentence, suspended for 18 months and banned from keeping animals for 10 years.
“I’m happy about the ban but she should have gone to prison for what she did,” Regi’s owner Lesley-Anne Brocklehurst said outside court. “Hopefully then it might sink in what she did, and how cruel it was.
“She’s not sorry for her actions, she hasn’t gone out of her way to apologise to me and my family. She seemed to be getting a lot of pleasure out of it so maybe it’s not the first time she’s done something like this.”
In the CCTV footage you can see the dog walk away from the cat before Curwen encourages him to attack.
Jonathan Fail who was prosecuting for the RSPA said: “Throughout the whole of the attack, the female made no attempt to stop it. In effect she seemed to be encouraging the whole incident.”
The dog has since been rehomed. Lesley-Anne added: “I have never wanted the dog to be destroyed. It was quite clear that it was only doing what it was told to do.“