I found the original article about the cat-killing from the Evansville Courier & Press, which as I expected, had some more detail. The newspaper requires registration so I have excerpted from the article:

Two Wal-Mart Supercenter assistant managers are each facing a felony charge of animal cruelty from an incident in which a cat living in a storage trailer behind the store was shot and wounded Monday and then shot repeatedly until it died on Tuesday.

A pellet gun from the East Side store sales floor was allegedly used, according to the sheriff’s report. Christopher Scott Anderson, 29, and Jeffrey Alex Hardin, 21, appeared in Circuit Court on Wednesday morning, where Vanderburgh County Magistrate David Kiely found there was probable cause for the charges.

The incident was reported by a Pepsi delivery man visiting the store’s grocery section. He told deputies that while making a delivery Monday he overheard a manager, later identified as Anderson, speaking with another employee about shooting a cat in the leg in a grocery stock room trailer behind the store. He said Anderson and the employee were laughing and smiling about it.

While visiting the store again Tuesday, the delivery man allegedly saw Anderson and others wrapping an object in shrink wrap and putting it in a box. He believed the object was a small animal. He then reported the incident.

Hardin, who was the manager on duty, told deputies that he was present when the cat was shot and that the BB gun used to kill it was still in the managers’ office.

Deputies confiscated a Daisy air rifle and a box of .177-caliber pellets and took Hardin to the sheriff’s command post for more questioning. Then, according to the deputies’ report, one of the officers spoke to the store’s general manager, Darrel Weitzel, about the incident. According to the report:

“Weitzel advised that he knew about the cat being in the grocery trailer. Weitzel stated that his staff tried ‘everything’ to get the cat out but nothing worked. Weitzel then stated that he told some of his employees to ‘just get rid of it, get a gun, and get rid of it.’ Weitzel advised that he knew of his employees’ actions but did not advise them not to do it.”

Hardin told a deputy that Anderson told him to get a specific air rifle from the sales floor and come to the trailer. He said both men shot at the cat but that Hardin fired the shots killing it.

So apparently the crime was that it took several pellets to eliminate the cat. Either that, or it was because they had a few laughs about it. Perhaps if they conducted a proper burial and funeral ceremonies there wouldn’t have been a problem.

Is this any worse than a rat dying a slow death on a glue board?