Cat Cruelty in the UK

I have bumped into a good website (link at the base of this post) in which cases of animal cruelty are listed. It is also a very sad website.

Cat cruelty in the UK in still very much alive despite excellent legislation and enforcement. But is it that good? What I mean is, is detection of crime good enough?

The last 50 cases of animal cruelty in the UK listed on the website all concerned cats. The most frequent form of cat cruelty is shooting at a cat with an air rifle.

Of the last 50 cases only 22% resulted in convictions. These cases go back to April 2006. One of the last ones was a case of a cat being thrown out of a car, a silver Renault Clio on the A508, killing it. The crime was witessed. It falls within section 4 of the Animal Welfare Act 2006. The penalty on conviction would be a maximum of 51 weeks imprisonment and/or a fine of £20,000.

It is believed that the car was occupied by three young men. Young men are the usual suspects it would seem. I wonder how many incidences of cat and animal cruelty go unreported or unnoticed? Lets take a guess. I'd say about 90% of the total are unreported. If I am correct, that makes 2.2% of all cases of cat and animal cruelty lead to a conviction and punishment.

Cat Cruelty in the UK goes largely unpunished in my estimation.

• See Cats and the Law
• See Animal Welfare Act 2006

Source: Pet-Abuse.com
Photo: by drinksmachine and published under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs creative commons License

Cat Cruelty in the UK to Cats and the Law