Cat set alight in Coleraine

I just want to add that when I lived in a quiet, middle-class residential area of Coleraine 20 years ago our much-loved, very friendly pet cat Tigger was kicked to death by one of our neighbours. Not a juvenile delinquent but a married family man who was heard to brag before and after the event that he knew how to 'get rid of' cats from his garden and he'd 'make sure they wouldn't be coming back'. Our cat dragged himself home on a freezing cold night with a broken back and paralysed back legs and he lay on the doorstep crying until my parents heard him. The vet had to put him down straight away and he died still purring with my mum and dad stroking him. The vet then shaved him to see if he could work out what had happened as there was nothing to suggest he had been hit by a car. He found that Tigger had been repeatedly kicked with such force that there were footprints bruised onto his sides. He was only eight. So I know how it feels to be on the receiving end of this sort of thing. I was broken-hearted for weeks and my parents could never bring ourselves to get another cat. There was no CCTV and no witnesses so neither the police nor animal rights groups could do a thing and our neighbour knew it. But we knew what he'd done and so did he. He could never look any of our family in the eye again and would scuttle off into his house with his head down if we ever saw him. I hope the scum that set that poor cat on fire are found and prosecuted. They need to have the book thrown at them to remove them from the streets and to deter other brainless psychopathic idiots from copying them. Sentences for those convicted of cruelty towards animals should be as severe, if not more so, as for those convicted of the same toward people. Period. Incidentally, most notorious murderers began with cruelty to animals.

Pity the police don't have the option of throwing the perpetrators of this evil crime to the big cats at Belfast Zoo WHEN they catch them. I would. Cruelty to animals is just the beginning of what these sadistic psychopaths are capable of...they NEED to be stopped in their tracks.

What a horrific thing to do to an innocent animal. a spell behind bars is too good for these 'scumbags' What type of homes do these 'dregs of society' come from?

This makes me sick to my stomach how a human being could do this to an animal people are becoming savage and need prosecuted this is horrendous having thought if I were to have children would those once innocent being become so sinister to inflict torture and pain on a helpless animal!!

some prople are just sick. Do do this to a living thing