A magistrate has slammed as Hong Kong man as “cold and ruthless” after he dumped two cats — at least one alive — in a plastic bag and discarded them in the street.
Found guilty of two counts of animal cruelty, the defendant, Lee Tin-Long, 27, was sentenced to four months in prison yesterday at the Tuen Mun Magistrates’ Court, according to Ming Pao.
The court heard Lee claimed that he decided to dispose of the cats — a British shorthair and a Sphynx cat — on the street in Yuen Long on May 19, believing they had both died from a fight.
The cats were discovered by a female passer-by a day later in a flower bed near the Yuen Long Trade Centre, after she heard one of the cats meowing. It was taken to a vet, but later succumbed to its injuries.
The prosecution, though, was skeptical about the defendant’s explanation, saying it was not certain how the animals sustained the injuries, which included damage to the cat’s left eye, signs of bruising on the head.
According to the defense, Lee had another cat, a Siamese, and that he would put the three felines in the cage together. Lee said it was possible the two cats sustained the injuries during a fight with the Siamese.
When asked by the magistrate if he still had the Siamese cat, the defense said that it got lost when he took it for a walk with four other dogs.
Nonetheless, the defendant, after waiting for an hour, decided against taking them for treatment, something pointed out by the magistrate, who suggested Lee wanted to avoid paying the cost of a vet.
“Why didn’t you take that precious hour to treat the cat,” magistrate Ivy Chui Yee-mei said, calling his actions “cold and ruthless.”
Chui dismissed the suggestion that Lee thought the cats were dead, adding that the female passer-by who found the cats said one of them was definitely still breathing.
While Lee said in his defense that he didn’t have a lot of experience with cats, the magistrate said that that was not an excuse, and that the defendant was selfish for buying the cats without giving much thought to it.
Some people, certainly, shouldn’t be allowed to keep animals.
