From 2018 to 2023, Aleeta Raugust of Calgary, Alberta, was described in court materials and public case summaries as a defendant who repeatedly abused, tortured, and killed domestic cats. The NCPAC Case Law Database summary of R. v. Raugust lists Criminal Code sections 445(1)(a) and 445.1(1)(a), identifies the animals as cats, and describes acts including strangling, beating, kicking, and stomping cats to death or near death.

The case summary says Raugust obtained cats through channels including Kijiji, recorded the abuse, kept and rewatched the recordings, and left some bodies where others could find them. It also records that she told police she had a problem with hurting animals and needed police to do something. She pleaded guilty to nine animal-cruelty-related charges and one charge of threatening property damage; nine cats were victims, and seven were killed.

On September 15, 2023, the court sentenced Raugust to 6.5 years in prison and imposed a lifetime animal prohibition order. Public summaries describe the sentencing judge as treating the conduct as extreme, sustained, and highly dangerous animal cruelty; after applying totality and youth-related factors, the final sentence was still 78 months. The case has been cited publicly as an unusually severe Canadian animal-abuse sentence.

This archive includes the case because it clearly shows a repeated, intentional pattern in which animal suffering itself was the object. Recording such a case should not reproduce abuse footage or turn harm into spectacle. The central record is the judicial fact pattern and the institutional response: obtaining animals, private abuse, recording and rewatching, body disposal, guilty pleas, prison sentence, and lifetime ban on animal ownership.

Sources and Image Note

• NCPAC Case Law Database: R. v. Raugust, 2023 A.J. No. 1196
• Aleeta Raugust entry and its public-report references

This archive did not locate a verifiable public image of the victim cats or the offender suitable for use. It therefore does not use substitute drawings or placeholder images. The photographs are real Calgary context images and are captioned as such.