A security guard has been jailed for carrying out a series of night-time cat killings.

Steve Bouquet, 54, from Brighton, stabbed 16 cats between October 2018 and June 2019.

Nine cats – Hendrix, Tommy, Hannah, Alan, Nancy, Gizmo, Kyo, Ollie and Cosmo – were killed while another seven were injured.

Bouquet has been sentenced to five years and three months behind bars.

After a spree that lasted between October 2018 and June 2019 he was finally arrested after being caught on CCTV at the scene of one of the attacks.

During a search of his home, a knife, with feline blood on it and his DNA on the handle, was found.

Last month, He was convicted of 16 criminal damage offences, in relation to the cats, and possession of a knife.

During his trial, jurors heard how shocked cat owners found their pets bleeding on their doorsteps and incurred thousands of pounds’ worth of vet bills.

One woman said: “I immediately thought it was a stab wound.”

In a statement read out in court, she described how blood “splurted out” from her 11-year-old cat Gideon.

Another woman, Carolyn Green, found her short-haired tabby Tommy lying on her doorstep, clearly injured, after only being let out about 15 minutes before.

In a statement read during the trial, Ms Green said: “I picked Tommy up and noticed blood on my T-shirt” before describing how she took him to the vets.

Tommy had suffered a 4cm cut, the vet discovered, and did not survive his injury.

Detective Inspector Chris Thompson said during the investigation Bouquet’s laptop computer showed that he had “repeatedly accessed a website in relation to lost cats in the city, paying particular attention to a cat that was killed”.

“He had also viewed numerous dog killing cat-related videos and two photographs of a dead cat in a front garden, taken at different times of the day, were recovered from his devices and believed to have been taken by him”, DI Thompson added.

Bouquet’s police interview was also read out during the trial, where he told officers that all he knew about the cat killings was what he had read in the newspapers and online.

He told police he was “no threat to animals” – but a photo of a dead cat was found on his phone, the court heard.

Sentencing Bouquet, Judge Jeremy Gold QC said his behaviour was “cruel, it was sustained and it struck at the very heart of family life”.

He was jailed for five years and three months.

Jayne Cioffi from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “This has been a tragic case for all the owners involved.

“Not only did Steve Bouquet inflict horrendous suffering to each of the animals he attacked, but he also caused real trauma to their owners, many of whom found their beloved pets injured and bleeding.”

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