It certainly wasn’t Cupid who shot the small black cat. But a loving couple did save him from what could have been a gruesome fate.
“There was a kitty screaming at our back door,” said Buckett Pendley, a real estate agent who lives with her husband, Mickey, in Crown Point, Indiana. “I looked out the window, and I couldn’t believe what I saw.”
What she saw was a small black cat pierced by arrow that had pierced his shoulder and front paw, and apparently shattered his front leg on the way through his body. The fractured feline had somehow managed to survive both his injuries and the arctic temperatures that had been plaguing the area for days.
Pendley’s husband, Mickey, cut off the shaft of the arrow. The couple then called their neighbors, Melissa Buggie, a veterinarian at a nearby animal clinic, and her husband Jeff Jamrosz.
Jamrosz, an assistant at the clinic where his wife works, rushed the cat to the hospital, where Buggie performed three hours of surgery to remove the arrow and set broken leg bones.
Late Thursday afternoon, the cat emerged from sedation and appears likely to survive, but his wound is badly infected. Jamrosz believes the arrow had been embedded for several days.
Pendley said the clinic was able to save the cat’s leg, and it has offered to absorb the medical costs.
It’s hard to know how the cat survived in subzero temperatures overnight, Jamrosz said. “He’s very lucky he didn’t get himself trapped in a fence.”
The gravely injured cat had to make his way across heavily snow-covered fields to reach the Pendleys’ home, which is located in a semirural neighborhood.
“The vet nicknamed him Bulls Eye,” Buckett said. “I nicknamed him Toughy forhaving survived.”
Clinic staff believe Toughy is about two years old. He was wearing a turquoise and white-striped collar when he was found, Pendley said. Area residents had seen him in the neighborhood from time to time since summer, and he had appeared to be healthy.
The Pendleys called neighbors Thursday in a fruitless attempt to find his owner.
It’s likely the cat was shot with the arrow from a slightly elevated height, and the shooting may not have been an accident, Jamrosz said.
“I think whoever did this should be very ashamed,” Pendley said. “We are all God’s creatures.”
[Sources: The Times of Northwest Indiana and NBC Chicago]
