A MOTHER discovered her four-year-old son had put a kitten into a microwave and started to ‘cook’ it, magistrates were told.

Little Cassie, a smooth-haired cat, who belonged to Claire Elizabeth Frear, 23, started fitting as a result of her ordeal, the Reedley court heard.

But Frear believed the cat had recovered sufficiently and left Cassie an hour later.

When she returned six hours later the four-month-old cat was dead, said RSPCA prosecutor Christopher Wyatt.

RSPCA inspectors and police, acting on a tip-off about the microwave incident, attended Frear’s home in Oxford Road, Nelson, but Frear was not at home.

Neighbours indicated she was at her parents’ home in East Croft so inspectors went there and obtained permission to enter her property.

An inspector discovered the microwave and later found the body of Cassie at the top of a binbag beside the house.

Mr Wyatt said that, when interviewed about the matter, Frear initially said she did not know how the kitten had died but it did suffer from leukaemia.

The charity conducted checks with local vets which she used but found no record of the kitten being treated.

An initial investigation by a vet failed to find the cause of the kitten’s death and a post-mortem by a specialist lab also drew a blank. But changes to the kitten’s internal organs suggested it may have been exposed to heat, such as that generated by a microwave.

Mr Wyatt said that later Frear was quizzed again and she told them what had happened to Cassie. She had been upstairs at her home when she heard the kitten crying.

Racing outside to an outhouse, she found that her son had placed the animal into the microwave for two minutes.

The court heard that she plucked the animal from the oven and it was ‘fitting’.

Hilary Doherty, defending, said her client’ son had mental health difficulties and was being tested for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Frear had left him alone only briefly while she went upstairs to fetch her son some clothes for a trip to her parents.

Miss Doherty added: “She really does accept that she ought to have known the kitten was poorly and she ought to have known to take it to a vet.”

Frear admitted causing unnecessary suffering by failing to secure veterinary care for Cassie . Magistrates disqualified her from keeping animals for five years and placed her under a three-month curfew, between 7pm and 7am, with £250 court costs.