Mansfield woman released from prison after cat cruelty sentence was ‘too high’

A Mansfield woman who was jailed for neglecting her cat so badly it sustained multiple fractured bones and eventually had to be put down has been released following an appeal, a court has heard.
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Rachel Cawte and her then partner, Carl Wright, were sentenced to 20 weeks and banned from keeping pets for ten years, by magistrates in Mansfield, on November 19, after they admitted failing to prevent unnecessary suffering to their black and white cat Lily.

Cawte wept when Recorder Stuart Sprawson ruled the original sentence was wrong, and gave her eight weeks, suspended for two years, at Nottingham Crown Court on Friday.

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Prosecutor Andy Cash said Cawte told a vet that Lily was limping after jumping out of a window, less than a month after she bought her, in September 2020.

Read the latest stories from Nottingham Crown Court.Read the latest stories from Nottingham Crown Court.
Read the latest stories from Nottingham Crown Court.

X-rays revealed fractures in her leg and neck, but Cawte refused the vet's recommendation that Lily be put down.

The cat began showing signs of improvement, but was returned to the surgery a month later with a fractured pelvis.

Cawte's flatmate found Lily and thought she was dead, but Cawte told him "she was simply scared of men", Mr Cash said.

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He took the cat to the vet and on Christmas Day a further examination revealed multiple fractures to her mouth and face, abrasions and trauma, and Lily had to be euthanized.

Cawte later told an RSPCA inspector that, during an argument, Wright threw Lily across the room so hard she squealed in pain.

On another occasion, he claimed Lily got her head stuck in a reclining chair.

Stefan Fox, mitigating, argued the magistrates’ sentence was "too high".

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He said Cawte was of previous good character and “truly sorry for what she had done.”

She lived in a "domineering relationship," which she had since ended, he said, but had been "fearful" of Wright's “threatening behaviour."

Reducing her ban on keeping pets to two years, Recorder Sprawson said: "It's unfair for us to judge Mr Wright in his absence, but overall we are satisfied that Ms Cawte was involved in a relationship where she was being domineered by someone else, and this affected her behaviour.”

Cawte, 47, of Beechdale Road, admitted one offence under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, and Beech, 46, of Stockwell Court, Mansfield, admitted two offences, on September 3.

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