Woman Found Guilty of Cat Cruelty

A WOMAN who was caught on camera, dumping a cat into a wheelie bin has been fined for his cruel actions.

Mary Bale, 45, admitted to a cruelty charge offence this morning at Coventry Magistrates Court.  She has been fined £250 and has also been forced to pay £1,171 in costs.  To compound her misery, she has been banned from keeping or owning animals for the next five years.  However, a second charge of not providing the cat with a suitable environment under the 2006 Animal Welfare Act was dropped.  Consequently, a six-month prison sentence was avoided.

The incident occurred in the early evening of Saturday August 21.  Footage on Brays Lane showed Bale stroking the cat, before picking the four-year old tabby called Lola up by the scruff of the neck.  She then dropped Lola into the bin without any regard for her safety.  Although Lola suffered no physical injury, she was left in the bin for 15 hours.  The cat was discovered by its owner, Darryl Mann the next morning.

Mr Mann, 26, checked the security camera footage, and posted the shocking video onto the Internet.  Within days, the RSPCA were investigating the incident and Bale has become a hated figure globally, with the social networking site Facebook having to remove groups from animal rights lovers calling for her death.  She resigned from her job as a bank worker because of the scandal.

Bale, who was said to be in tears throughout the hearing left court on Tuesday without comment.  She is grieving over the death of her father last Thursday at Coventry’s Walsgrave Hospital.  During an interview in the investigation process, Mary Bale admitted that she had been struggling with depression and coping with her father’s sudden decline in health.  The district judge in this case, Caroline Goulborn told Bale on the sentence: “The media interest in this case has resulted in you being vilified in some quarters, and I have taken that into account.”

To some, it might sound a lenient penalty for such a cruel mistreatment of a pet, but hopefully, this message has been hammered down for all people to look after pets in a responsible manner.