Naming and shaming: Mark Anthony Scott and his brother Stephen Scott who starved their cats are banned from keeping animals

This is just a little vignette, as I call it, of life in the home of a couple of idiot and cruel brothers in England who starved their cats and left a dog with an untreated skin condition. RSPCA inspectors made several visits to their home between September 2019 in February 2020. The cats looked thin and when they were palpated the bones of their hips and spine could be felt. They showed extreme hunger when taken to a veterinarian. When food was put down, they ate immediately and the veterinarian reported severe hunger.

Naming and shaming: Mark Anthony Scott and his brother Stephen Scott who starved their cats are banned from keeping animals. Two of the animals. Pic: RSPCA.

When an RSPCA inspector, Rachael Hurst, visited she saw a ginger shorthaired cat frantically eating something off the bathroom floor next to the toilet. One cat, a-year-old tortoiseshell was found to be emaciated and a veterinarian reported that she would have been suffering for many days before taken to a veterinarian.

Sadly, two cats had to be euthanised because they were in such bad condition. They had been taken to the PDSA for treatment.

The Scott brothers live at Vine Street, South Shields, UK. They were sentenced at South Tyneside Magistrates' Court on Wednesday, 19 May 2021 after being found guilty in their absence. In other words, they did not attend the hearing. The probably failed to turn up.

These two need to be named and shamed for their cruelty. These cats could have starved to death and it appears that they were not far from it. Such cruelty. We don't know how the RSPCA got involved. Perhaps somebody reported them. That is the usual way these acts of cruelty are exposed.

It seems that they semi-abandoned the cats and a dog who was in a bad way. The court found that Mark Scott "permitted the failure of another person to provide adequate nutrition to the cats and failed to supervise his brother in caring for them". It looks to me like a case of acute neglect, simply shutting one's mind to the fact that they were starving cats to death. Incredible irresponsibility. A complete lack of sensitivity towards animal welfare. I don't know why they weren't fined heavily or even sentenced to serve time in prison. That's what I would have given them if I were the judge. We don't have photographs of them, sadly. They will look like uneducated idiots.