A CAT killer has been banned from having any role in owning or caring for animals for the rest of her life.

Rachel Louise Smith, 31, accepts that she is not the right person to look after any pet or other livestock, her solicitor Kevin Blount told York Magistrates' Court.

Phil Brown, prosecuting for the RSPCA, said the 31-year-old woman had strangled her cat Chico because it had urinated on her clothes.

District judge Adrian Lower said normally he would consider jailing someone for killing a cat.

“There is no excuse for killing Chico,” he told Smith. “But I have to take into account your poor mental health as it was then and is now.

“There is no order the court can make in order to reflect what you have done but I have to make an order.”

He gave her a three-year conditional discharge after reading a psychiatrist’s report on Smith.

He also banned her from keeping, owning or caring for any animal for life but allowed her to apply for the ban to be reviewed after 10 years.

She must pay £200 prosecution costs and a £26 statutory surcharge. She lives on disability benefits.

Mr Blount said the defendant had "complex psychiatric needs” and that she had a “very complex and tragic history”.

“Her mental illness played a significant part in this offending.”

Smith, of Skirpenbeck near Stamford Bridge, pleaded guilty to animal cruelty and an offence under the Animal Welfare Act.

Mr Brown said a mental health team had contacted Humberside Police after Smith told them she had shot her cat.

She told police she had strangled the pet and later told an RSPCA inspector it had urinated on her clothes.

Mr Brown said the RSPCA was aware of Smith’s mental illness and had prosecuted her so that she could be banned from having control of animals in future.

The judge said: “It is a very sad case.”

Smith had “lost her temper” when the cat had damaged her clothes but her mental illness meant she had not dealt with the incident in the way someone who was not mentally ill would have dealt with it, he said.

Mr Blount said she had been given the cat by someone who thought it would help her with her difficulties.

“She soon realised that was not the case,” he said.

She had tried to arrange for the cat to be rehomed without success.

Smith was already working with health professionals to deal with her mental illness and the probation service could not help her, the court heard.

Her illness meant it was not possible for her to do unpaid work or be put under a curfew.

That left the judge with the choice of giving her a conditional discharge or a prison sentence, said Mr Blount.

The judge said prison was not appropriate for Smith.