A cat owner is in "shock" after she found her beloved pet with blood on her chest after being injured in an apparent slingshot attack.

Alison Smallman's cat Bella was left needing an operation to remove a pellet from her shoulder.

She said: "It is absolutely dreadful. It was a real shock."

What happened?

On the evening of Monday, March 1, her British short haired tabby cat came home "limping really badly" and she thought Bella had injured herself when she was out.

But when Alison and her husband took a closer look they saw "quite a lot of blood on her chest".

"I thought 'oh my God she's got a puncture wound there' so I thought she had been in a fight and a cat had clawed her," explains Alison.

"I could feel a lump but I thought it was an abscess because cat bites get abscesses really quickly. She was off her food and very quiet."

She added: "That evening she was very scared and timid and kept looking at us with a haunted look."

'Bullet or pellet' discovery

Salisbury Journal:

Alison took Bella straight to the vet in the morning after her injury and strange behaviour.

When the vet pulled the fur back it looked like Bella had suffered a "bullet or pellet" wound.

"There are no words to express how I feel to be honest," added Alison, who was also left with a vets bill of £328.

The slingshot pellet removed from Bella, which is a ball bearing, weighs around four grams and was a centimetre wide.

"They reckon she was just sitting there [when it happened].

"It is face on. It is not like she's got it on the back leg or anything. I don't know how close they were.

"It was horrendous."

Bella 'doing well'

Despite her ordeal Bella is "doing well".

But Alison admits the attack has made her frightened to let her out and left her feeling "shocked and dumbfounded".

She said: "What saved her is it hit into her shoulder and that is why she was limping because it hit her shoulder blade.

"They said when they got it out they had to get a lot of fur out so the impact had pushed the fur into the wound.

"She's got a couple of stitches in there which will dissolve."

'It's just scary'

Alison says other residents have reported seeing dead birds and pigeons.

She is worried the attacks are a pattern and could escalate.

She said: "My concern is if it starts off with birds and then it's a cat, then it's a dog and then a child.

"It's just scary. I'm shocked."

Speaking to police, she was told there had been incident in Three Legged Cross where a slingshot was fired through a house window.

"The force of these things and the velocity - they would kill somebody," added Alison.

"If it had got her on the side on the soft tissue she could have died."

It is believed it could have been "bored teenagers" who fired a slingshot at Bella.

Alison is urging parents to sit down with their children if they have got slingshots to explain the dangers.

She said: "Please sit them down and say shoot at cans or get some rubbish but don't shoot at anything that is living."

What the police said

Dorset Police has asked for witnesses to come forward.

A spokesperson for the force said: "We received a report at 4.05pm on Tuesday, March 2, 2021 from a cat owner in Holly Grove in Verwood who reported that their pet had returned home on the night of Monday, March 1, 2021 with an injured shoulder.

"It was taken to the vets on the morning of Tuesday, March 2 and the vet removed a small pellet from the shoulder, which is believed to have come from a slingshot or similar device."

Anyone with information is urged to contact Dorset Police at dorset.police.uk, via email 101@dorset.pnn.police.uk or by calling 101, quoting occurrence number 55210034774.

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