A Hong Kong court has convicted a woman for animal cruelty over her prank of putting her cat in a washing machine.
The court however decided to return the pet to the woman after realizing that the case was nothing serious.
The woman who works as an insurance agent was identified as Yuki Wong Yee-Ting. She was arrested last February 2021 after she showed a cat being left inside a spinning washing machine.
Her video went viral online after she posted the video on her Instagram account.
The animal was seen to be distressed and was trying to escape the machine until Yuki opened the lid.
One of the captions the owner wrote was the cat defecated in an area where it was not supposed to. Another caption describes the animal as a frightened little fat cat.
Yuki told the court that it was her friend who made the prank and sent the videos to her.
She also moved to Britain during mid-2021 leading her to be uncooperative with the investigation.
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The woman insists that she was a cat lover and she only posted the video on Instagram because she thought it was funny.
Deputy Magistrate Henry Fung Lim-wa rejected the explanations made by the suspect.
“Had the defendant really been a cat lover, even if the video’s claim was false, that the cat was not frightened, she should have at least been upset by the perpetrator’s action instead of sharing it with friends as if nothing had happened,” the magistrate said.
“I fail to see how the video deserved a peer’s review. There was no merit in sharing the video,” the court added.
The court also hit the woman for failing to cooperate with the authorities.
“The defendant broke the law for the first time. I do not find the case to be particularly serious, and the accused did not display any violent tendency in the past,” the magistrate said.
A sentence will be out on February 21. Animal cruelty is tantamount to three years in prison according to the South China Morning Post.
