A Calgary family will soon be reunited with their pet after a nearly two year separation but the celebration was short lived after the owner learned the cat had suffered a horrific injury.
Shannon Stevenson received a phone call from the Calgary Humane Society on Wednesday informing her that Lexi, her five-year-old tabby, had been found in the Bowness area. The cat had disappeared in 2015 after leaving a home in the southeast neighbourhood of Forest Heights but was identified through a database.
Stevenson soon learned her cat had been shot in the front left leg and the injury required amputation.
“It made me feel awful,” said Stevenson. “I’m a cat owner, a cat lover. If somebody is out there harming animals, I needed to bring this to the attention of people, especially in the Bowness area where she was found.”
Lexi’s leg was amputated at the McKnight 24 Hour Emergency Veterinary Hospital on Thursday. The procedure was successful and, by Friday, the tabby was walking around.
The family looks forward to welcoming Lexi home in the coming days as the tabby had been a birthday gift to Stevenson’s son five years ago.
“He’s a very loving child and this is his family member,” said Stevenson. “He’s very happy.”
Shelby Kimura, a veterinarian at the emergency hospital, says someone capable of hurting an innocent animal could become violent against people.
“It is absolutely concerning,” said Shleby Kimura, a veterinarian at the McKnight 24 hour vet clinic. “Not only that it happened, that someone would do that, but, potentially, that they got away with it.”
Kimura says Lexi isn’t the first pet suffering from a gunshot wound to be treated at the emergency hospital. She highly recommends keeping cats indoors as ‘they don’t have a chance against a car or a bullet’.
Staff at the hospital recommends installing a microchip or tattooing your cat to improve the odds of a reunion should the animal disappear.
With files from CTV's Alesia Fieldberg
