A 20-year-old woman who drowned her two cats before wrapping them in a towel and dumping them in her wheelie bin has been banned for life from keeping pets.

Appearing at Norwich Magistrates Court on June 2, Beverley Lowe, of Old Post Road, Briston, pleaded guilty to two counts of causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal.


The court heard how the cats - a black-and-white male called Gizmo and a tortoiseshell female called Delilah - would have suffered "fear, distress and panic" for at least four minutes when Lowe killed them in the bath at her home on October 22 last year.

Johnathon Eales, prosecuting, said the dead cats were found wrapped in towels in a wheelie bin at Lowe's house on October 24, after a friend of hers reported the matter.

The following day the RSPCA confiscated another cat and a pet chihuahua from Lowe.

Lowe had told authorities the cats had wandered outside when she left the door open while putting the rubbish out. She said she later found the cats with blood on them and that they had been in a road accident, so she put them in the bath to wash off the blood, and they drowned.

But an expert who investigated dismissed this claim, and said that while the cats had been through a "blunt force trauma", the signs did not match a road accident.

Mr Eales said Lowe had no previous convictions and this was her first court appearance. He said: "This still leaves the burning question of why? Why do such a thing?"

Addressing the court, Lowe said: "I know what I did was wrong and I shouldn't have done it. One of the witnesses kind of led me to kill the cats because she said that she would have done it after I said what had happened. Also because I was pregnant it was really stressful and it kind of led me to kill the cats anyway."

She was given an 18-month suspended jail sentence, ordered to pay the court £728 and has been banned from owning pets for life.

Presiding magistrate Mary Wyndham said: "The harm was high because both cats, because of your treatment, were killed, and in a violent manner. And we've heard from an expert in this matter that great suffering was caused to both of these animals."