Justice for Kitten beaten to death with baseball bat

A six-week-old kitten was battered to death to avoid vets bills after being trapped in a door, a court heard. Pre-school assistant Emma Cherrett, 25, accidentally injured Star the cat in the door last October but the wounds were not fatal, magistrates heard.

However, instead of taking him for treatment, her mother Patricia Smith, 46, asked for a carrier bag and took a metre long baseball bat-shaped cylinder of wood.

Cherrett placed the short haired male into the bag and her mother took it to the front doorstep and rained down three to four hard blows, crushing the animal's skull.

Both women, from Colden Common, in Winchester, were found guilty of cruelly ill-treating a domestic short-haired kitten.

Chairman of the bench John Stainton told them jail was a possibility when they are sentenced later this month.

He said: "The suffering was not inevitable. A reasonable person would have taken the animal to a vet."

In interview with the RSPCA, Cherrett said: "I didn't want it to go through any more pain. I had to put it out of its misery. The last time I had to have a cat put to sleep it cost £170 at the vets, I couldn't afford it."

She added: "My mum had to hit it a couple of times. I don't think she hit it hard enough the first time."

Cherrett said she had not had Star spayed because it cost £45, which was too expensive.

She said in her statement: "At the end we both felt we were doing the right thing. Now I know I didn't do the right thing.

"If it happened again I think I would take it to the vets, hand it over and say it wasn't mine."

The court heard the kitten would have survived if it received treatment after being trapped in the door and it would have been alive after Smith's first blow.

The RSPCA became involved when a member of the public contacted inspectors after hearing what the pair had done.

Jan Edwards, the charity's inspector in charge of the case, said: "It has been quite a shocking case really because it is such a small animal, such a small, little kitten, six weeks old.

"The fact that they decided in less than a minute that the kitten was that severely injured and that was the only course of action for them is extremely worrying."