Chester man hurt kittens, planned to eat them, SPCA says

A drunken Chester man brought two blood-soaked kittens home with him Sunday night and told his roommate he planned on making a meal out of them, officials from the Delaware County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said yesterday.

Francis McGinley, 44, told his roommate he had run over the 4-week-old kittens with his truck "so I could eat them for dinner," according to the police report.

He then brought the kittens into the house and placed them in the bathtub, SPCA spokeswoman Justina Calgiano said.

"I don't know if the intent was to clean them up so he could eat them, but at that point his roommate called police," Calgiano said.

Authorities pronounced one of the kittens, a white female, dead upon arrival, but Calgiano said the cat actually just had labored breathing.

Both kittens - believed to be siblings - were taken to a vet, where emergency technicians named the black, male kitten Karma and the white, female kitten Nirvana. Nirvana was placed in an incubator, and both are now doing well, Calgiano said. They are expected to be placed in foster care today and put up for adoption in four weeks.

Calgiano said she doubts that McGinley ran them over with his truck because it's unlikely they could have survived. Dave Schlott, the Chester animal-control officer who took the kittens to the vet, said he was told that someone had squeezed them.

The charges against McGinley include cruelty to animals and public drunkenness, Calgiano said.