Ban for couple who starved cats

Two kittens were starved by their Wolverhampton owners to the point where their bones had become "as thin as cocktail sticks," a court was told.

Matthew Bellingham, aged 22, and and his partner Susan Thompson, 19, have been banned from keeping animals for life after locking pets Sammy and Tabby in an outside toilet where they were forced to sleep in filth. When rescued, Sammy was so cold his temperature was too low to register on a thermometer and it had to be put down.

Roger Price, prosecuting for the RSPCA, told Wolverhampton Magistrates Court yesterday how veterinary surgeons who examined the kittens were "shocked" by their condition.

The surviving animal weighed just over 3lbs after eight days of being fed on a drip.

Their plight came to light in July after Thompson, who kept the kittens at her Bushbury home, called family friend Catherine Cage in a panic because they were ill.

Mrs Cage rushed around to find Sammy collapsed on the floor and Tabby also in a bad way, Mr Price said. She told RSPCA inspectors: "I could feel their skeletons. Their bones were as thin as cocktail sticks. I felt sick."

Mrs Cage drove the cats to the PDSA in Wolverhampton where a vet found sores on their back legs and ulcers on their foot pads. They were also dehydrated, emaciated and dangerously cold.

The following day Sammy suffered a seizure and was put down.

Mr Price said: "One horrified senior PDSA staff member said she had not seen animals in that condition in 15 years' working for the charity."

Bellingham, of Wodensfield Tower, Plym Close, Wednesfield, and mother-of-one Thompson, of Whetstone Grove, both pleaded guilty to three counts of causing unnecessary suffering to animals. They were sentenced to four months in custody, suspended for two years, each ordered to pay £400 costs and put under a 6pm-8am curfew for three months. District Judge Shamim Qureshi told them: "I find you both pathetic and incapable of looking after any living creature."