The mother of two who admitted to cruelly killing her six-year-old female tabby cat at her home in Crawley West Sussex in the microwave avoided jail. The RSPCA said that her punishment was “far too lenient”.
Nadine Trewin, 31, was sentenced to a five year ban on keeping animals and a two year rehabilitation order. Comment: in five years she’ll be allowed to own a cat again. It’s staggering. What would be wrong with a permanent ban? It would not be a massive loss to the woman and it would protect cats and dogs. Note: Please see base of page. This woman is today legally entitled to own a cat.
The RSPCA said:
“We feel she should have received a lifetime ban because the act was deliberate.”
Agreed. Thank you.
Trewin appears to have a drink problem. On the day she microwaved her cat she had drunk seven cans of beer and almost two bottles of wine. She became angry with her cat because she was bitten by a flea. Comment: Trewin, dear, that was your fault for not keeping your home clean enough and not ensuring that your cat was free of fleas.
She claimed her cat had microwaved herself! She said that her cat had jumped into the machine and slammed the door shut which activated the oven. Phew. You couldn’t dream up a worse lie.
She told her friend that she had killed her cat. Her friend then notified the RSPCA which prosecuted her.
In mitigation Trewin wrote in a letter to the court:
“I have always had strong feelings of love for animals. I have never intentionally harmed them. I spent my life with animals and lots of pets. I am sorry for what happened.”
Believable? She got off lightly. Britain is too soft on crime.
Source: Mail Online. Note: This was meant to be ‘news.’ It was published within the last seven days according to Google but I have since discovered that the story was first published by the BBC on 23 July, 2001! The Mail Online fooled me and everyone else by the look of it. The author claimed that the crime occurred in 2016 when it was in fact 2000. The story is still valid and still highlights the problems with lenient sentencing. If anything things have deteriorated over the intervening seventeen years.
So did she get another cat to torture? I hope she has been and is a pariah, but probably not.