An Edmonton man who stole a cat, stabbed it to death and then cut it into parts to “cook it up” and eat it was handed a 10-month jail sentence on Tuesday.

Zachary McKinnon, 19, was also placed on probation for three years and banned from owning pets for 10 years after earlier pleading guilty to theft and animal cruelty.

Provincial Court Judge Donna Groves said it was a “serious” and “barbaric” crime with “disturbing” facts.

“The allegations are gruesome. The cat was killed, its neck was broken and its body was dismembered,” said Groves. “This was a brutal and senseless killing of an innocent and defenceless animal.”

The judge ruled the Feb. 13 cat theft and killing was “planned and premeditated” and done as revenge for an allegedly stolen iPad and she rejected McKinnon’s claim that he had killed the cat to put it out of its misery.

“These acts are so egregious they fall into the category of unspeakable,” said Groves, who noted the cat killing was “devastating” to the family that owned the cat and called it “nothing short of traumatic” that they had to hear the “gruesome” details of their beloved pet’s demise.

The judge also spoke of the “barbaric” actions of McKinnon and his two co-accused for frying up the slain cat’s body parts in a skillet and said that if firefighters responding to a report of a small fire had not showed up, she feared “the unspeakable would have occurred.”

Court heard police and firefighters came upon the grisly cat mutilation-killing in the Mill Creek Ravine between Kaasa Road and 35 Avenue, about 6 p.m. on Feb. 13.

McKinnon and two other teens admitted setting the fire and when asked about the dead cat on the ground nearby — which was described as “cut up, stabbed and mutilated” with some parts found “still warm in a skillet” — McKinnon said it looked like a coyote had killed it.

However, McKinnon later admitted he had caught the cat, who was named Pudge, earlier that day and had stabbed it to death using scissors and knives and one of the other teens told police that McKinnon had asked him to kill a cat because “he was bored” and he wanted to eat it.

Court heard McKinnon had lived with the family that owned the cat for four months and he said he had gone there for a visit and left with the cat in his backpack.

Court also heard that McKinnon and his adult accomplice had gone on the Internet to learn how to drain the blood from a cat for the purpose of cooking.

In a victim impact statement, cat owner Derek North said he had had the 16-year-old orange tabby since Pudge was a few weeks old and knew McKinnon and he called the killing a “massive heart-breaking betrayal.”

North also said the crime was “sick and twisted” and “unbelievable and unforgivable.”

Outside court, he called Pudge his brother.

“Pudge was more than just a cat,” said North. “In a lot of ways he was my best friend.”

Meanwhile, Wendell Mack Mah, 18, and a 14-year-old male who cannot be named under the Young Offenders Act, are still facing charges of animal cruelty.

tony.blais@sunmedia.ca