(CBS) When his missing cat, Lola, was found in a trash bin, howling in distress, Darryl Mann, of Coventry, England, checked the surveillance video from a security camera outside his house.

On the tape, Mann saw a woman pause to stroke the cat, then inexplicably drop it in the bin.

CBS News correspondent Richard Roth reported on “The Early Show” the cat was trapped in the trash container for 15 hours.

Mann told reporters, “I don’t know how anyone could, you know, go to bed and sleep at night knowing they’ve just locked a cat in a wheelie-bin; I just, you know, I don’t know what was going through her head at the time.”

Mystified by the random act of cruelty that turned his cat into kitty litter, Mann posted the video on Facebook, where it didn’t take long to stir online outrage, even death threats aimed at the middle-aged woman from the middle of England ultimately identified as 45-year old Mary Bale, who works at a local bank.

Bale told the tabloid The Sun, “It was a split second of madness.”

She explained to the paper, “I thought it would be funny.” And anyway, she added, “It’s just a cat.”

Now police and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals are investigating.

Lola, according to her owner, is tired, but fine.

You know I want to be mad at Mary Bale and call her a psycopath and a lunatic but she kind of has a point. It is just a cat. Like I never even thought of it that way. I was kind of thinking of it as a defenseless animal that was minding its own business. Big Mistake. That’s how you start having feelings and stop putting cats into random garbage cans. Then no one is having any fun.

PS

I love the “I thought it would be funny” defense. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used that exact defense. It never works but its always worth a shot. Why’d you throw that egg at a car? why’d you light that firework in someones face? Why’d you steal that beer? I thought it would be funny, and most of the time it is funny just not to anyone but me and Mary Bale.

PPS

If I had a mug like Mary Bale I’d probably spend my time throwing cats in garbage cans too. Its not like she’s choosing cat torture over the4th of  July party at the Playboy Mansion. Cat tossing is the only thing she has

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Thanks to Biffy for the tip