1/2 Simba after her operation (private photo).
Kat Simba (4) was seriously injured after she was shot in the Wever area in Heeze. Her owner Vicky Van is shocked. Nine years ago exactly the same thing happened in the same neighborhood. Then cat Dushi was the victim. “There’s a crazy person living in this neighborhood!”
“Simba was hit in her back leg just like Dushi,” says Vicky. “Simba had been outside since Monday. We have a camera at home and we suddenly saw her come home on Tuesday, crying for help. We were at work ourselves, but when I saw that, I immediately went home.”
“Simba had a lot of blood on her back leg, near her thigh.”
When she got there, she saw Simba limping. “She had a lot of blood on her hind leg, near her thigh. We immediately took her to a vet. There was a real hole in her hind leg. The vet took a picture of it. The bullet was close to the bone and Simba was in incredible pain. She then underwent surgery.”
The pellet has been removed and comes from an air rifle. The bullet has been handed over to the police who are investigating the case.
Vicky is very angry. “How is this possible in a village like Heeze?” she wonders. According to her, it must have happened near the Wever. “Our cat never goes far away. It is unimaginable that people deliberately do this to scare cats away. This is animal abuse.”
“Anything higher and we might have had to put our cat to sleep.”
Vicky immediately contacted a local whose cat Dushi was shot in the same neighborhood nine years ago. Dushi was hit in the back leg with a shot of buckshot. “We were really lucky,” sighed owner Robin at the time. “Any higher and his knee would have been shattered. Any higher and we might have had to put him to sleep.”
“Robin was never able to find the perpetrator of that shooting,” says Vicky. She has now made a rigorous decision. “Our cat doesn’t go outside anymore!”
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