Cat recovering after being shot by airgun in West Yorkshire
The RSPCA say 9-year-old Muffin needed surgery
A cat is recovering after being shot by an airgun in West Yorkshire.
The RSPCA say that 9-year-old Muffin was found by a member of the public in their garden in Allerton Bywater and her owners were traced after an appeal on social media.
She was taken to the vets where X-rays revealed the limb was shattered in two places.
An airgun pellet was found by her knee joint and near her back, along with another one in her stomach which is likely to have been there for some time because of a layer of fat around it.
The RSPCA says the number of reported incidents involving cats being targeted with airguns, catapults/slingshots and crossbows doubled in the first six months of this year, with 44 cases being reported compared to 18 in the same period in 2023.
The charity’s data also shows that between 2020 and 2023, there were a total of 896 incidents reported to the RSPCA involving weapons affecting all types of animals, with 31 incidents occurring in West Yorkshire during that time.
West Yorkshire RSPCA Inspector Adam Dickinson said:
“These types of incidents are very worrying and leave other people feeling anxious that their pets or even their children could be hurt.
“It’s unspeakably cruel and totally unacceptable to shoot animals for ‘fun’ like this, or to harm them for target practice, but sadly, we receive hundreds of reports every year.
“Cats like Muffin often sustain life-changing injuries - commonly blindness - from being shot with a weapon or in some cases don’t not survive at all.
“However, we believe the numbers we hear about only show part of the problem as not all cases will be reported to us and there may be situations where animals injured and killed by these weapons are sadly never found - especially in the case of wildlife.
“We’re so pleased that Muffin is making good progress and we’d urge anyone with first-hand information about this incident to get in touch with the RSPCA.”