Stomach-churning door cam video captures pest control worker kicking cat into the air

Disturbing footage circulated online shows a pest control salesman brutally kicking a cat.

The incident was captured on a Ring doorbell camera outside a home in Las Vegas last month.

In the clip, the young worker can be seen approaching the doorstep of the house as the black cat follows happily at his side.

The man then looks around, apparently to check if anyone is watching, before booting the animal – sending it soaring into the air.

The recording was initially posted on Ring’s Neighbors app, which allows users to share activity in their area.

The man who uploaded the video, Aaron Aguilar, said it was his wife’s cat, and that the “dude who kicked [it]” was a representative of Williams Pest Control, a company based in Nevada.

He claimed that he had contacted the firm and had been trying for “three weeks to right this wrong with no progress.”

Twitter user @bookofjonah shared the video on Twitter after a friend who lives in the neighbourhood sent it to him.

Here’s how viewers responded to the now-viral encounter:

The backlash also prompted scores of people to post the footage on the company’s Yelp page, with captions including: “Animal abuser,” and “proud employee of Williams Pest Control torturing neighbourhood pets for fun.”

In an interview with local broadcaster 13 Action News, Aguilar said he had posted the clip to spur the company into action.

He said he didn’t think staff had taken his concerns seriously, and wanted to see the firm make policy changes. He also wanted to see the young man in question enrolled in anger management classes.

Royce Williams, the company’s president, said he was horrified by the worker’s behaviour.

“His actions should not in any way reflect the values or the standards of Williams Pest Control,” he told 13 Action News.

Williams said that the perpetrator was an unpaid sales trainee, not an employee, and that he had gone off on his own to try to solicit clients without his knowledge.

When the boss learned of the animal abuse, he terminated the man’s contract.

Williams insisted that he had been in regular contact with Aguilar and had complied with almost all of his requests.

“We’ve done every single thing he’s asked us to do except when asked for our employees and their names and information, we didn’t give it to him and we stopped that conversation,” he said.

Williams added that he’d never received so many negative phone calls as in the wake of the video’s release.

He stressed that he loves animals of all kinds and was glad to see the cat wasn’t seriously hurt.

“I want to make sure that it is understood that there’s never, ever a time that abuse is accepted,” he said.