The home of a woman filmed picking up a cat and throwing it into a rubbish bin is under police guard in Britain after her actions sparked outrage from animal lovers and even death threats.
Mary Bale (45) told the Sun newspaper on Wednesday: "I really don't see what everyone is getting so excited about - it's just a cat."
"I don't know what came over me, but I suddenly thought it would be funny to put it in the wheelie bin, which was right beside me. I did it as a joke because I thought it would be funny. I never thought it would be trapped. I expected it to wriggle free.”
Ms Bale admitted she “shouldn’t have done it” but added that she did not deserve the hatred of people around the world.
The cat's owner, Darryl Mann, had installed security cameras outside his house after vandals damaged his car so consulted the CCTV footage after his tabby Lola went missing for 15 hours and was finally found crying for help inside the bin.
On the footage, Mann and his wife Stephanie saw a middle-aged woman leaning down to stroke Lola in the street - then picking up the tabby by the scruff of her neck and dumping her into the bin, slamming the lid closed.
The couple put the footage onto the video sharing website YouTube and set up a Facebook site called "Help Find The Woman Who Put My Cat In The Bin."
"I don't know how anyone could, you know, go to bed and sleep at night knowing that they've just locked a cat in a wheelie bin," Mann told Reuters Television.
The footage sparked outrage from animal lovers across Britain and prompted an investigation by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
A separate Facebook group calling for the death of Ms Bale was today removed by moderators as police said they were “closely monitoring” threats made towards her online.
A spokeswoman for the social networking site said the group, entitled “Death to Mary Bale”, contravened Facebook’s terms of use. Hundreds of people posted angry messages online after a clip showing four-year-old tabby Lola being thrown into a bin was uploaded by her owners.
West Midlands Police described the some of the group’s content as “inflammatory and offensive”. A spokeswoman said: “We have monitored Facebook to assess any threat of harm to Mary Bale as part of this investigation.
Mann said Lola survived the ordeal in good shape. "She's fine. She's very tired obviously with everything that's being going on, but other than that she's fine," Mann told reporters at his home in Coventry, 153km northwest of London.
Reuters