Cat shot by pellets

This poor cat came home one evening in some distress and his owners brought him straight in to the hospital. At first it wasn´t obvious what the problem was, pellets make very small wounds in the skin, but once we took this x-ray we could see the problem clearly.

The cat´s head is on the right, you can see both front legs and his chest. The light grey oval in his chest is his heart. Four airgun pellets can be seen in the cats neck and head. The one which is in his head has fragmented slightly. Amazingly this cat not only survived this trauma, but is doing well and is back to normal. We were able to remove one of the pellets but the others remain and should helpfully cause him no further problems once the wounds have healed.

This picture shows just how much damage airgun pellets can have, this cat was extremely lucky. Sadly it is something we see occasionally in the clinic, and often in spates when someone has got a gun and takes pot shots at the local cats for a few days.