General Chat

http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/help-save-thomas-the-cat
<3

Do you know Thomas' owners, Rollo?
The reason I ask, is because this sounds a bit unbelievable.
"it has come to light that Thomas was actually shot and not ran over."
There's a big difference - one that would be fairly easy to see.
Why, if he was shot in the chest and head, may he also have a broken leg and a broken back?
Surely if the vet thought he had broken his back and leg, a full X ray would have been done when looking for the bullets?

it isn't so easy

first off there is an idiot in Poole ( poss more than one ) who thinks shooting cats with an air rifle is fun ; there have been a lot of cases over the last 2 years ( and some in Southampton too ).

depending on where the cat gets shot and how many times its reaction can be very similar to being run over ; as more cats are hit by vehicles than shot it is quite natural to assume a collision injury in the first instance - there is nothing much to see with an airgun injury there are no bullets just small metal pellets

small animal vets do not generally have an x-ray machine and access to one would be too expensive without pet insurance.

thus diagnosis depends pretty much on the skills of the vet - detecting an air rifle pellet is far from easy

in this case it appears that the report has co mingled the initial untrained guess of the owners with the findings of the vet after he sedated the cat and was able to locate the airgun wounds

the cat is now with the PDSA and it is pretty clear from the x-ray that (a) the injury is for real it is no wind-up (b) PDSA are going to take up the cat's case and (c) any money raised by crowd funder will go towards PDSa's costs

| personally feel that an assault on a person's pet dog, cat or horse should be treated as an assault on the owner and punished as such. I have seen the misery that can ensue with people of any age but especially children and old people.

Although air pistols and rifles can be bought and used legally without a licence ( why ? ) the nominal power is quite low. Unfortunately it is quite easy to upgrade the weapons to have far more hitting power which can be lethal to small animals and both painful and serious to humans.

A cat would be unlikely to survive a shot from a .22 rifle and walking around Poole with such a weapon might just attract some comment.

Some years ago our cat was shot with an air rifle. As it happened we knew the house it came from (the shot). We informed the police and the local paper and the police had a word with the lads concerned. They asked us if we wanted them to take it further but we said we were happy for them to have a word with the boys and their parents and we never heard another shot from them, it was one pellet and wasn't deep and she was fine. There have been a couple of instances of cats being shot in the past year in Gloucester which have been in the paper, don't know if the ones concerned were caught.