Pet head? American fined for smoking bong containing cat

• Man tried to calm pet down with cannabis smoke
• 'Lots of people do this, I'm just the first to get caught'

Acea Shomaker, Shadow the cat and the bong. Photograph: AP

A man who stuffed his girlfriend's cat into a marijuana bong said he had done it on other occasions and it had calmed the cat down.

Acea Schomaker of Lincoln, Nebraska, said he never intended to hurt six-month-old Shadow.

Sheriff's deputies fined 20-year-old Schomaker for animal cruelty after responding to a domestic disturbance. Officers caught him smoking from a box-like contraption with Shadow inside the 30cm x 15cm base.

Schomaker's girlfriend, Marissa Vieux, was fined for animal cruelty because she allegedly did not try to stop ­Schomaker, Sergeant Andy Stebbing said.

Vieux, 22, said she took in the cat two months ago from friends who had abused it. Schomaker said the cat would bite and scratch but he did not want to discipline it by swatting or squirting water at it. He said they did not take it to an animal shelter for fear it would be put down.

Schomaker said he decided to use the bong because he had heard about people calming their pets by blowing marijuana smoke in their faces.

"I know for sure this isn't the first time someone has done this," he said. "I'm just the first one to get caught."

He said he put the cat in the bong a total of three times and it calmed the cat.

"Every time we took her out she would pretty much just lay down and proceed to clean herself and act like a stoned person," Schomaker said.

The bong had a 30cm piece of garden hose coming out of a Plexiglas box, with the top secured with duct tape. Schomaker said the pipe was built in such a way that the cat did not get too immersed in smoke.

Schomaker said police and animal ­specialists lectured him about why what he had done was cruel. He said he had learned from his mistake.