Celina Shead admits to stabbing therapy cat and throwing him out two-storey window in Dee Why
A court has heard the shocking details of why a northern beaches teenager killed a pet therapy cat by stabbing it 20 times after adopting the 11-year-old male moggie only five days earlier.
Manly
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Chilling details have emerged in court about the violent death of a pet therapy cat that was stabbed 20 times by his owner before the lifeless body was hurled out a second-storey window.
Celina Shead, 19, of Dee Why, killed 11-year-old ‘Ginger’, which she had adopted just five days earlier, because she could not “bond” with him, Manly Local Court was told on Tuesday.
The unemployed Shead has pleaded guilty to one count of torture, beat and cause death of animal and one count of commit an act of aggravated cruelty upon an animal.
A police facts sheet tendered to court said Shead’s neighbour in a block of units in Mooramba Rd had heard the “sound of a cat in extreme distress” soon after 8am on October 23 and called police.
Before officers arrived the female neighbour saw the cat being thrown from Shead’s second-storey bedroom window.
The neighbour, and another person, found the body of the large ginger and white cat lying in a garden bed and “could see what looked like stab wounds on the cat’s body”, the facts sheet said.
One of the neighbours placed a white towel over the body.
“A short time later two cat litter trays, with cat litter, were thrown from the same window, landing on, or near, the cat.”
The facts sheet said that Shead’s father told officers that she had adopted two cats FROM the RSPCA the previous Saturday but “the cats did not seem to bond with his daughter … this seemed to upset her”.
When police entered the flat she shared with her father and older sister, they found Shead lying on her bed. She denied knowing anything about the dead cat and denied owning any cats.
Police round a knife on the kitchen bench and found blood spots on a purple rug in the kitchen.
The cat was taken to Allambie Vets where X-rays revealed 20 puncture wounds on the right side of the body and 12 on the left, where the knife had gone right through the animal.
“Most organs were damaged or punctured,” the facts sheet said.
The RSPCA told police the two cats were used as therapy pets and had been with the RSPCA for 12 months.
“The death of the cat has devastated many of the (RSPCA) staff and they are now receiving counselling,” the facts sheet said.
Manly Local Court had previously been told that the attack on the cat came just six days after Shead, who is now in custody, was sentenced in Manly Local Court for 30 unrelated offences.
Court documents showed her crimes included assault occasioning actual bodily harm, being armed with the intent of committing an indictable offence, contravening an AVO and destroying or damaging property.
Shead also pleaded guilty on Tuesday to stealing a dog — a Pomeranian called “Bella” — that had been tied up outside the Dee Why Grand shopping centre at 4.30pm on September 13.
Police later found the dog, with its coat dyed orange, at Shead’s home.
Magistrate Michelle Goodwin ordered Shead, who was diagnosed 12 months ago with borderline personality disorder, return for sentencing on January 28.