A CAT owner is frightened to let her precious pet leave the house after he was shot in the chest with an air rifle.
Linda Foote, 60, of Hockley Lane, Bradwell-on-Sea, found Smokey in a nearby hedgerow, covered in blood and with a pellet wound to his chest and a fractured shoulder last Tuesday morning.
Vets at Avon House in Maldon managed to save Smokey, but now he cannot leave the house for six weeks, must spend four weeks in a cage to let this shoulder heal and may yet have to have his front leg amputated.
"I'm not sure it will be a good idea to let him out at night again," said Linda.
"I'm frightened he will become a target and this time he won't come home. It's a shame because he loves going outside. Sometimes he just pops in for dinner and goes back out.
"It was shocking to see my poor cat like that. He was covered in blood. I was so upset. I see him as part of the family."
Mrs Foote knew something was wrong when Smokey failed to come home on Tuesday morning.
Smokey, who spent two nights on a drip at the vet, was shot sometime between midnight and 5am.
"I was so angry to find out that he had been shot. Who would do such a thing to a poor little defenceless cat?" she said. "Whoever did this was completely idiotic and stupid. They deserve to be shot themselves. If it was someone shooting rabbits then they must have been pretty reckless because he was shot from the front."
He has to spend four weeks in a cage, giving his fractured shoulder a chance to heal, or if his injuries fail to heal he may have to have his front leg amputated.
"I've tried to warn the community about this and I want to know if anyone else has experienced this. Then we can try to stop it," she added.
It comes in a week when the RSPCA revealed almost 800 air rifle attacks were reported to the charity in 2012, an increase of 40 compared to 2011.
The attacks include several cats shot in the face and whose eyes had to be removed, and others who did not survive.
In May, a cat called Rosie had to be put down after it was fatally injured with a shotgun in Wickham Bishops.
Figures are set to rise again this year with 438 reports already for the first six months of 2013.
"Cats and wildlife are often the target of air rifle attacks, simply because they are out in the open with no-one to protect them," said James Yeates, chief veterinary officer at the RSPCA.
"The injuries caused by such attacks are horrific and often fatal. These attacks are often deliberate by people who just don't care about hurting animals or are deliberately targeting animals to keep them away from gardens.
"Whoever carries out these attacks needs to understand that they are illegal and you face up to six months in prison if caught.
"The fact that we have received almost 800 reports of injured animals is deeply worrying and shows we still need to keep up our work to stop such attacks."