Dennis Perrault

Cut a 7-week-old kitten's genitals off with a pair of scissors - without anesthesia.

Click HERE for the story from CBC News.

A Halifax man who cut off a kitten's genitals with a pair of scissors has been sentenced to house arrest for three months by a judge who noted his problems with post-traumatic stress disorder and pain medication.

Dennis Perrault was sentenced Friday in Halifax provincial court. He had pleaded guilty to two counts of animal cruelty.

The court heard Perrault left the navy after cleaning up human remains following the 1998 crash of SwissAir Flight 111 off Peggy's Cove. Judge Anne Derrick told Perrault that his actions were serious enough to warrant jail time, but she didn't believe that was the best sentence for him. The judge said she recognized that Perrault suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I think she rightly determined this had to be a factor," defence lawyer Peter Mancini told reporters outside the courtroom. "When you take this in combination with the fact that he was on a tremendous amount of pain medication following injuries sustained in a robbery, I suspect he just didn't have that normal fuse that most of us have to deal with stressful situations and he acted improperly."