EDMONTON - Anger and threats erupted on the Internet over the weekend as people reacted to charges against four young people who allegedly broke into an Alberta house and cooked the family's cat to death in a microwave.
One Facebook group with more than 50 members asked that the teens involved -- one aged 13, the other three 15 -- be prosecuted as adults.
"I think we should start to make a better example out of these things that are happening so that other people will think twice before doing something like this,'' Laura Westgate, who started the group, said in a telephone interview.
"Just to get awareness out there is the main point of it all, especially about (Bill) 373.'' That bill, introduced by Liberal MP Mark Holland, would allow stricter penalties for animal abusers.
Westgate said she started the group because the other available forums were full of profanity and hate rather than a discussion of the importance of changing the existing law, which has been in place since 1892.
Another Facebook group on the issue said the teens should be shot, while individual posters threatened violence. "That's NOTHING compared to what the good people of Camrose will do to these pricks now they know their names, and hopefully soon phone numbers and addresses,'' one person wrote about any legal sanctions the teens could face.
Police allege the four teens broke into a house in Camrose, southeast of Edmonton, on Dec. 29 and Dec. 30 while its owners were out of town on vacation.
The second night, they allege, the group put an adult cat in the microwave, and turned it on, killing the animal. A family friend taking care of the house while the owners were away found the cat.
Each of the teens has been charged with unlawfully killing an animal, causing unnecessary pain and suffering to an animal, breaking and entering, theft, and possession of stolen property. The teens are scheduled to appear in court in Camrose on Feb. 7.
Westgate said she has always been an animal lover, and as she talked from Fort St. John, B.C., her three cats could be heard meowing in the background. But she said this incident was the first to spur her to act.
"The disregard for the life of the animal, it was so cruel,'' she said, adding she had begun researching the topic and was sickened to read elsewhere on the Internet that it could have taken the animal four or five minutes to die.
"The cat was in some quite extreme pain and for quite a long time. It's horrific.''
One of the Facebook postings briefly gave the teens' names, as well as the screen names two of the teens used on the popular Alberta social networking website Nexopia. Those posts were taken down.
Both Nexopia profiles show dark-haired young men staring unsmilingly into the camera.
Other pictures, according to names posted on Facebook, include the other boys involved.
Comments on one of the profiles, most by teens of around the same age, ranged from jokes to rage and disgust. Several threatened violence.
"How dare you do that to an innocent family on Christmas,'' asks one girl.
"You will get your ... face smashed in on the nearest curb,'' wrote another person.
A separate serious case of animal abuse in the province has already sparked a 112,000-signature petition demanding tougher penalties for animal abusers.
In that case, a dog named Daisy Duke was beaten, its head covered with a bag, and then dragged behind a vehicle. It did not die from the mistreatment but had to be put down.
A teen pleaded guilty to animal cruelty in that case, and received a conditional sentence. A second teen, Daniel Charles Haskett, 19, will be sentenced for his role in the animal's death in April.
