Woman kills neighbour's cats with anti-freeze to stop them urinating on her strawberries

A woman who killed her neighbour's Abyssinian cats with tuna laced with anti-freeze has been ordered to pay £1,500 in compensation. Katherine Hall, 57, from Airth, near Falkirk, said she had acted to stop the pets from urinating on her strawberries. Falkirk Sheriff Court heard that the five-and-a-half year old felines died in agony days later.

The cats owner, Andrew Boyd, described the sentence as a "disgrace". When Mr Boyd contact police after the vet told him his cats had been poisoned, officers found the remnants of the deadly meal and a cat-scaring machine still in Hall's garden



Hall was found guilty of causing unnecessary suffering to the pets, named Nush and Mr Baz, by feeding them a drug or substance knowing it to be poisonous or injurious. Defence agent Murray Aitken said: "Mrs Hall knows she put out the tuna, and she highly regrets that decision. She's had death threats because of it, and it's negatively affected her health, so it's definitely a decision that will live with her for the rest of her life."

Sheriff Craig Caldwell ordered Hall to pay Mr Boyd £1,500 in compensation, but stopped short of imposing a fine or calling for background reports as a preliminary to imposing community service or jail. He told her: "I take a dim view of cruelty to animals, and you should have known mixing tuna with anti-freeze would cause serious damage."



Mr Boyd said he and his wife Wilma had been devastated by the deaths of their pets and said Hall had got off lightly. He said he had paid more than £500 in vet bills to try and save the animals, which were put to sleep on 2 and 6 October 2008.

He said: "I think the punishment should have been more severe. I don't want to see anyone going to jail, but she should have been banned from having animals, and given community service at least. The sentence was a disgrace. Money was the last thing I wanted out of this."