An eight month old kitten was almost killed when she was shot with an air rifle in Filby.
Tippy, who belongs to Linda and Hugh Davies of Thrigby Road, is now on the road to recovery but came close to death after she was injured somewhere close to home.
The Tonkinese kitten underwent emergency surgery at a specialist vets practice in Cambridge - and surprised everyone when she made it through.
Speaking out in the hope whoever is responsible might be found, Hugh said they realised something was wrong when Tippy came home mid-morning on July 18 and was bleeding from her side.
'She jumped on the bed and was quite lethargic,' he said. 'I'm not sure how she made it home because she must have been in pain.
'When we noticed she was bleeding, I had a look and could see a hole like a shot hole in her side. We thought she might have jumped down in the garden and got a stick in her side.
'At the vet, an x-ray showed she had a pellet still inside her. She had been shot with what we presume was an air rifle.
'Because it was soft tissue, they recommended we went to Dick White Referrals in Newmarket, which we'd actually been to before, so we got in the car and took her straight away.'
By that stage Tippy was really quite poorly. 'They told us it was a 50/50 chance,' explained Hugh. 'Where the shot was causes an infection very quickly so they could not wait, they had to operate. The pellet had just missed the liver and kidney, gone through the colon, nicked the pancreas and lodged near the stomach.'
Praising the vets, the family said they had been 'wonderful', calling every morning and night to let them know how Tippy was coping. After several days, the kitten came home and is now recovering slowly.
She remains on strict cage rest and it will be some weeks before she is allowed back outside. It is not known when Tippy was shot - or where.
'The police asked if we'd heard of anything similar happening locally and I couldn't think of anything at the time,' said Hugh.
'But we later remembered finding a sparrowhawk in the front garden last year.
'It wasn't able to fly so we manage to catch it and it was later released in Winterton, but it had been shot with an air gun pellet too.'
Anyone with information on an air gun being shot in Filby is asked to call police on 101 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555111, quoting reference CR37110-14-5.
Has your pet been the victim of an airgun attack? Email lauren.rogers@archant.co.uk
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