Updated

Two eastern Kentucky men are charged with animal cruelty in the deaths of each others' cats.

David A. May, 20, and Arlon K. White, 27 — who each kept a cat at a trailer court in Hode, near the Kentucky-West Virginia border — allegedly killed the animals last week, Martin County Deputy Sheriff Arthur Bowen said Wednesday.

May allegedly knocked White's cat off his car and shot the animal with a rifle, Bowen said.

When White went to May's mobile home for an explanation, he allegedly grabbed May's cat around the neck with both hands and choked it, then threw the body across a driveway and told May, "'Now we're even,"' Bowen said.

Bowen said he told both men that, if they had problems with a neighbor's animal, they should call animal control, not take matters into their own hands.

"I said, 'Two wrongs don't make a right,"' Bowen said.

May and White are scheduled to appear in Martin District Court on Aug. 31.