SPCA investigating after cat survives bullet through head
If the bullet had been a couple of millimetres in either direction, Vox would never have lived to come home.
Sometime between Sunday morning and Monday evening, the nearly two-year-old cat was roaming near his owners’ home in New Cornwall, north of Mahone Bay, N.S., when someone shot him in the back of the head at a range close enough to singe his skin.
“I was appalled that anybody would do that,” Vox’s owner Angela Dauphinee said on Friday. “I don’t know who would think of it in the first place.”
Amazingly, the bullet passed right through Vox’s head and the Dauphinees found him on their back doorstep late Monday. They could see he had injuries to his head, particularly around the left eye, but didn’t notice blood or large wounds.
Angela Dauphinee and her daughter pet Vox in their home Friday. Vox is frightened to be alone so the Dauphinees have been sleeping near him each night. (CBC) However, after veterinarian Beverly Greenlaw X-rayed the cat, it became clear Vox had extensive internal injuries.
“When I went into the X-ray room and I saw it, my heart just sunk. I just thought, ‘I can’t believe somebody would do this,'” she said.
The X-ray revealed the path of the bullet and fragments of bullet still inside Vox’s head.
Greenlaw doesn’t believe the cat was shot with a pellet or BB gun. She said it is more likely the bullet came from a gun that would be used to hunt an animal the size of a coyote.
“With animals you’ve got a lot of fur involved so you don’t really get to appreciate how devastating the wounds are until you start to clip all the hair away,” Greenlaw said.
“There was shards of bone and tissue scattered throughout the mouth and a portion of the upper and lower left jaw was basically missing.”
Vox was lucky to have survived a bullet through the head. (CBC) The bullet entered in the rear left side of Vox’s head and exited beside his left eye. Vox will be permanently deaf in his left ear and may lose the sight of his left eye. His jaw may be permanently misaligned and he will likely have to eat soft food for the rest of his life.
Dauphinee says Vox has always been the most cuddly and loving of her family’s five cats. Although they are horrified that someone attacked their cat, her family is thankful his injuries were not worse.
“They say cats have nine lives, so my husband and I said he’s probably down to six, because that was a big one,” she said. “But he’s coming around slowly but surely.
“I am really hoping that it just doesn’t happen to anyone ever again. It’s our pet, he’s part of the family. Just like anyone else who has pets. Maybe people will think twice.”
Beverly Greenlaw is a veterinarian at Oakland Veterinary Hospital. (Shaina Luck) Greenlaw says her clinic sees one or two cases of gunshot wounds in animals each year. Sometimes owners don’t even know their animal has been shot.
“This kind of action is purely malicious,” she said. “It’s not something you could say was in any way an accident. Somebody actually had to go get a gun, load a gun, aim the gun [and] pull the trigger on this poor little animal,” she said.
The SPCA is investigating the matter, which it says is an offence under the Animal Protection Act and the Criminal Code.