MOUNT VERNON — When Barb Annett, who lives at 14500 Old Mansfield Road, returned home Saturday night she found an upsetting sight — her cat had been shot with an arrow.
“I found him 8:30 Saturday night when I came home,” she said. “He had chewed the arrow in two so he only had one end broken off. He had made it to the porch. When I tried to get him in the carrier, that’s when he started biting and everything. He’s really a nice cat but he was so scared.”
Annett got the cat to the vet who told her it might not last through the night. He also said it looked like the cat had been shot at close range.
The cat did survive the night and was brought home by Annett on Monday morning.
“So, now I just have to keep him in a cage for a couple weeks until he gets his strength back,” she said. “He hasn’t woke up since he got home.”
Annett has had the cat for about two months and it is about a year old. She did report the incident to the Knox County Sheriff’s Office.
“(The deputy) took the arrow with him,” she explained. “He told me to call if I had any other problems and wanted me to look for the other part of the arrow that had been chewed off so he could go match it up with someone we suspected may have done it in this area. So we’ve been looking around the woods to see if we could find it. He said he would help us as much as he could.”
Annett said there is a small woods on her property and that they have found wild animals shot and left in the woods before. She said they hear shooting there and although she and her husband, Ron, used to take walks in the woods, they don’t do it anymore. She thinks the cat was in the woods when it got shot.
“I had a couple of neighbors that called me this morning,” Annett said. “They have four cats and they were just horrified. They won’t even open the door and let their cats out unless they are with them now.
“I hope we don’t see this anymore,” she said. “And I just wanted everybody around here to be aware of it.”
Calls to the Knox County Sheriff’s Office and the Knox County Animal Shelter seeking comment were unreturned.
