Domestic abuser who tortured kitten to death in front of terrified partner jailed

This article contains details that some readers may find distressing

A domestic abuser who tortured a kitten to death in front of his terrified partner has been jailed for four years.

Lewis Aitken, 21, was also banned from keeping animals for life and handed a non-harassment order banning him from contacting his ex-partner for ten years.

A senior sheriff told him that in 30 years in the criminal courts, he had never seen a more atrocious act of animal cruelty.

Aitken, who was in a relationship with the woman, also 21, for two years, began to abuse her when she became a mother, Stirling Sheriff Court was told.

He gave her a black eye, headbutted her, and repeatedly punched her in the face and on the body and spat on her.

Mobile phone footage was played in court of her screaming, sobbing and begging for mercy during a four-month campaign of abuse which began in February 2024.

The abuse ended in June that year when she called the police after he killed the kitten.

The court was told the woman was at home in her flat in Alloa, Clackmannanshire, about 1pm on June 17, 2024, when she heard a noise coming from a cabinet, and opened the doors to find Aitken’s 12-week-old kitten inside.

Aitken, who had been asleep, became angry because she had released it.

He said he had left it in the unit on purpose so it would see him as “a saviour”.

Told by the woman that was “animal cruelty”, Aitken replied, “I’ll show you animal cruelty”, before taking the kitten by its legs and starting to hit it. Then he threw it across the room.

Prosecutor Duncan MacKenzie said when the woman tried to stop him, he grabbed her by the neck and squeezed.

Mr MacKenzie said: “She could feel herself going light-headed. She tried to stop him and he let go, then slapped her on the face four or five times.

“Then he turned back to the kitten and continued to beat it with his hands.”

‘One of the most violent attacks on an animal ever encountered’

This article contains details that some readers may find distressing

People left the courtroom as Mr MacKenzie, the depute fiscal, narrated that MacKenzie’s partner could see that one of the kitten’s eyes was “bulging as if it was falling out” and the tiny stricken animal began to urinate blood.

Aitken blamed what had happened on his partner, and put the kitten, still alive, in a chest of drawers.

Mr MacKenzie said: “She [Aitken’s partner] was begging him to stop, but he would not.

“She was hyperventilating. She was frightened as she wondered what he was capable of if he could do this to a cat.”

At around 8pm – around five hours later – Aitken’s “focus returned to the kitten”, the court heard.

He kept putting it in the bath to wash the blood off.

Aitken’s partner “heard it screaming and had to cover her ears because the sound was so horrible”, Mr MacKenzie said.

After a time, Aitken came out of the bathroom and said he did not know what to do.

Mr MacKenzie said: “He retrieved the kitten and wrung its neck in front of her before throwing it to the ground.

“As he raised his leg to stamp on the kitten, she ran away into the living room.

“She believes the cat died at that point.”

She persuaded Aitken to put the kitten’s body in an Asda bag, and she called police the next day.

Officers met her at her mother’s, “evidently distressed and upset”.

Mr MacKenzie said: “She struggled to compose herself as she explained what happened.”

A post-mortem found the kitten’s spine was severed completely in two places.

A veterinary pathologist said it was “one of the most violent attacks on an animal he had ever encountered”. The injuries would have caused “significant pain before the kitten succumbed”.

Aitken, of Alloa, who pleaded guilty earlier in October to injuring the woman as part of a course of domestic abuse, and causing death and suffering to the kitten, appeared for sentencing on Wednesday.

Solicitor Robert Smith, defending, said Aitken couldn’t remember killing the kitten.

In addition to the four-year jail term, Sheriff Keith O’Mahony imposed a two-year extension term, to be served in the community at the end of his time in custody, during which he can be recalled to prison if he reoffends.

Sheriff O’Mahony said Aitken’s behaviour towards his partner was “alarming” for someone at the time only 20 years old, and he had been assessed by a social worker in a backround report as having “simmering anger and frustration”.

Sheriff O’Mahony said: “That assessment is clearly borne out by his appalling actions where he killed a kitten by a mechanism which I am not going to repeat.

“Suffice to say that when the matter was originally narrated, members of court staff had to leave the courtroom, so upset were they by what was being described. For my part, in three decades in the criminal courts, I have never seen a more atrocious act of animal cruelty. It was a brutal and wicked act.”

He told Aitken: “Given your appalling conduct, I see no valid reason why you should ever have access to another animal.

“You are hereby disqualified from owning, keeping, taking possession of, or taking charge of any animal for the rest of your life.”