Knutsford woman's shock as pet cat shot with air rifle

Jess Elbeck, an on-call firefighter, who also lives by the town's fire station, said it 'beggars belief' how someone could do such a thing, as sounded a warning to other pet owners to be on their guard.

Luckily, one-year-old Chester is on the mend, despite requiring life saving emergency surgery to remove the pellet from his intestine, with Jess saying he is lucky to be alive after the quick thinking of her partner Mhairi, who also just happens to be a vet.

She said: "It's just unbelievable really and not the kind of thing you expect, especially not here because it's such a nice area.

"He's generally in the house for most of the day, but he will venture out of a night time.

"But he never seems to wander too far, and whenever I've called him, he usually comes back in an instant."

Poor Chester is now recovering at home

Jess believes Chester was shot at some point between when she went to bed on 11pm on Monday, September 20 and 5am the following morning, although his horrific injuries were not instantly obvious to her.

She added: "I get up quite early for work but I didn't notice he was in pain initially.

"He normally gets up and sprints downstairs in front of me because he knows he's going to be fed and he's really greedy.

"But he didn't move from his bed and I just thought it was really strange, as he'd never done that before.

"So I put his food out and he still didn't come down.

"At that point, my partner carried him down, but he didn't jump up for his food, so we knew something wasn't right.

"It was when I went to pick him up, he made this pained noise as I put my hands under his stomach."

Despite Mhairi being a vet, there didn't appear to be any obvious sign of injury and it was only when Jess left for work that she spotted a trace of blood and a small wound on Chester's side.

"She rang me and said she thought he'd been in a fight or been bitten," Jess said.

"So she decided to take him into work to get it looked at, but on the way in, he began vomiting blood in the car.

"They did an x-ray on him straight away and that's when they saw the little pellet inside him.

"They had to do emergency surgery which resulted in them discovering it had gone through his abdomen and into his intestine.

"They managed to get the pellet out luckily, but he's been left with pretty long scars."

This was the pellet removed from Chester's intestine

The matter has been reported to the police, and although they said they will make some enquiries, it might be difficult to find the perpetrator without any evidence of where it exactly took place.

"The same also applies to the RSPCA, because without any intelligence as to who it might be, it's difficult for them to do anything," Jess said.

"I just wanted to raise awareness in case anybody else has got any similar stories.

"It could have easily killed him.

"You don't expect things like this to happen in your own neighbourhood and definitely not in Knutsford.

"I don't there's not much you can do about where cats go when they leave the house, but for someone to actually go to the lengths of shooting one with an air rifle just beggars belief."

Chester had to have life saving surgery after being shot with an air rifle