Cruel act dooms loved pet
A MT LOUISA family has been forced to make the heartbreaking decision to euthanise their beloved pet cat, after it was shot in the back with a pellet gun and left paralysed.
Young mum Teegan Wardill said she didn’t think anything was out of the ordinary when she wasn’t greeted by her tortoiseshell cat Tosca at the door on Monday.
But at 1pm Ms Wardill received a call from the local vet, who said the cat had been brought to them after being found in a front yard, its front nails torn up from trying to drag itself home.
Doctors initially suspected Tosca may have been struck by a car but an X- ray proved something more sinister.
“The vet told me to come look at the X- ray. Tosca had no broken bones, no pelvis dislocations or breaks,” Ms Wardill said.
“It was then that she scrolled up to reveal a light spot on the X- ray. She went on to inform me that it was in fact a pellet gun bullet and it was lodged in her spine on the L3 vertebrae.”
“Some horrible person had done this on purpose.”
Ms Wardill said Tosca, a “friendly” and “loving” cat, been with the family for six years, and had grown up with her daughter Kylah.
“I felt my heart break as the vet said surgery was not an option unless we wanted to pay a couple of thousand dollars and even then they couldn’t guarantee success,” she said.
The Wardill family was considering their options when Tosca took a turn for the worse and the decision was made to put her to sleep.
“To say we are heartbroken is an understate- ment,” Ms Wardill said.
“Yesterday I whispered to her that she didn’t have to fight anymore, I told her if the pain was too great to make it clear to us and today she did just that.”
A concerned resident in the area said she had lodged a police report after spotting two children walking around brandishing what she thought might be an air rifle.
She said the boys seemed to be targeting a nest of plovers and were heard saying “you gotta shoot the babies, you gotta aim for the babies”.
The Townsville Bulletin is not alleging the boys had harmed the cat.
Officer- in- charge of Townsville station Acting Senior Sergeant Andrew Rickerby said the use of any firearm was concerning.