GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The Kent County Prosecutor’s Office says Michael Patrick Stackhouse will spend between 16 months and nine years in prison after stomping on a cat until it died in April.
Stackhouse was sentenced Tuesday in Kent County Circuit Court after being found guilty of felony animal abuse causing death in early October.
The 35-year-old killed the cat in front of a crowd of neighbors and children at Cedar Springs Mobile Estates in April.
“The cat came into my house. I was just trying to defend my house. My wife, she’s allergic to cats,” Stackhouse said in April. “It was fighting with my dog. I got tiny kids. I don’t know what that cat is going to do. I didn’t know nothing about this cat.”
Stackhouse told FOX 17 he was facing a harsher sentence for the crime because of prior convictions for home invasion and drugs.
