A 44-year-old father in Sham Shui Po who killed a cat by slamming it onto the ground after the cat scratched his son in the face was sentenced to two and a half months in jail.
The father, Cheung Ming-shing, pleaded guilty to one count of animal cruelty at the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on Tuesday.
The court previously heard that the incident occurred on January 28 in a flat on 81 Fuk Wing Street when a 15-month-old shorthair cat scratched a 17-year-old teen in his face.
The father Cheung was said to be angered and furiously threw the cat onto the ground – with the cat later certified dead.
Passing sentence, magistrate Veronica Heung Shuk-han said Cheung could have just let go of the cat as he grabbed hold of the cat after the animal scratched his son in the face.
She noted that cats were capable of jumping from height, yet the cat in this case died from severe injuries after being slammed onto the floor from a few feet high.
This clearly shows how hard Cheung had slammed the cat onto the floor, said Heung, adding that the defendant must have tried to let off steam by killing it.
The magistrate had adopted a sentencing starting point of 4.5 months and took one-third of the jail time off due to his guilty plea and another two weeks off, considering the defendant had filed a report to the police on his own after the incident.
