A group of teenage thugs in Cork heartlessly threw a defenseless cat to be mauled by their greyhounds and hunting dogs, in front of the cat’s two juvenile owners today.

Kathleen O’ Brien of Fairhill in Cork, a mother of five, owned Boots the cat for 17 years and wept as she told of how her pet was picked at random by teenagers to be slaughtered, reports the Irish Independent.

‘We had Boots for 17 years—he was just sitting outside our front door. The next thing, I was in the kitchen and I heard a load of banging on my front door and my windows’.

Kathleen left the house to discover Boots savaged and bloody surrounded by two of her traumatized children. The attack was very quick as Kathleen’s children could not interfere  in time and the teens reportedly ran off laughing. She immediately took him to the vet but he died minutes later.

The local Gardai and CSPCA were contacted and authorities are investigating two similar attacks which saw a kitten and a rabbit torn apart, amid fears that they may be linked.