EUGENE, Ore. — An expectant father was sentenced to 10 days in jail for breaking the back of his wife’s cat, and the judge expressed concern for the baby about to be born.
“It’s not a large step to go from cruelly treating an animal to cruelly treating a child,” Lane County Judge Charles Zennache warned before sentencing Timothy Ahrens on Friday.
Ahrens, 28, of Eugene made a deal with prosecutors in which he pleaded guilty to aggravated animal abuse. Beside the time in jail, he was sentenced to two years on probation and can’t own pets for 15 years.
Ahrens was jailed Sept. 25 after Eugene police learned he injured his wife’s cat about a week earlier. The cat named Charlee had to be euthanized, The Register Guard newspaper reported.
Prosecutor Debra StollUnderwood said in court that Ahrens’s father and stepmother told police Ahrens has been abusing animals since he was a child, and “he doesn’t like cats.”
Ahrens took the cat to a veterinarian after it was injured and told police that he had “messed up,” Stoll-Underwood said.
Ahrens apologized in court and said the arrest cost him his job working as a caregiver for people with developmental disabilities. “I’m sincerely and deeply sorry,” he said.
His attorney, Laura Fine Moro, said her client is going to get counseling. The judge urged Ahrens to follow through on a treatment plan.
Some studies have suggested that people who abuse animals are more likely than others to abuse children or domestic partners.
The Associated Press reported this week that the FBI has decided to make animal cruelty a stand-alone crime category in its annual crime reports, listing it the same way as it does crimes such as homicide and arson. In the past, the FBI has lumped animal abuse into a general category of lesser crimes, making its prevalence difficult to track.
