A couple have been banned from owning pets for life after 114 guinea pigs and 31 cats were found packed into their faeces-filled home.
Michael Weston, 73, and Helen Weston, 61, both admitted five animal welfare offences and were also handed 12-week suspended prison sentences.
Newport Magistrates’ Court was told some guinea pigs had been stacked in broken cages in the couple’s dirty and cluttered living room with others running loose, with some cats displaying flu-like symptoms and having trouble breathing.
RSPCA chief inspector Emma Smith told the court in a written statement the conditions were the worst she had ever seen, adding: “The smell of faeces and ammonia was overwhelming.”
The RSPCA said in a press release that the couple initially had had a small number of guinea pigs, but after the husband had developed health conditions and his wife had become his carer the guinea pigs bred and “things got on top of them”.
It said Smith described seeing “ground-down faeces so thick and hard that it had produced a ‘mud carpet’ throughout the living room” during a visit to the Westons’ house in the Duffryn area of Newport in May 2025.
She told the court on Wednesday that it had taken a veterinarian, a veterinary nurse and multiple RSPCA officers hours to locate and confine all the guinea pigs.
She added: “The room itself was swarming with moth-type creatures and the smell of stale and animal excrement was overwhelming.”
