A Turkish woman has come under fire after footage of her stealing a blanket from a stray cat before striking the animal with it went viral. People took to Twitter to brand her a “brutal thief.”

The footage shows the white cat hanging around on the side of a street next to a cardboard box, supposedly the feline’s home, where the stray animal used to sleep and keep warm in chilling temperatures. The box contained a tiny coloured blanket.

A woman in a grey coat passes the cat and affectionately pats him on the head before moving on.

Another woman, in a black hooded coat and with bare legs, then comes into the picture.

She is seen stopping in front of the cat for a while before she snatches its blanket, despite it being blatantly too small for her figure.

The cat uses its claws to cling on to it, but after a short-lived battle, the woman succeeds in pinching it.

Yet, in case she hadn’t done the cat enough harm by stealing its winter cover, the woman is then seen striking the creature with its very own blanket several times.

One netizen lashed out at the woman for“striking the child.”

The footage was recorded by a security camera belonging to a veterinary clinic in the Süleyman Bey neighborhood of Turkey’s western province of Yalova. Berna Özer, owner of the clinic and the one responsible for sharing the content on her Facebook page on Wednesday, expressed her bafflement at the woman’s acts.

“What can be said to someone who steals a small blanket from a cat in such a cold weather?” Özer, who takes care of the stray cats in the neighbourhood, said, Hürriyet Daily News reports.

The footage stirred uproar on social media, with hundreds of animal lovers flocking to the cat’s defence.

Also on rt.com Hero in a half-shell: Lions can’t crack crafty tortoise’s defenses (VIDEO)

One Tweeter blasted the hooded woman as “nuts”, while another branded her “brutal and unscrupulous”.

The third one took a more pessimistic outlook on the incident, saying: “I’ve always said that the conscience of people is in extinction.”

A man mirrored this as he branded the woman “uninhibited, vicious, ignorant, full of filth. […] We really have to go through a moral conscience.”

Like this story? Share it with a friend!