A young Abergavenny couple have been forced to keep their beloved pet cat inside after he was shot with an air rifle – twice.

Laura Morgan and husband Ryan, have kept their cat Fitz locked indoors after he came home one day in June with a pellet wound which ripped through his back and out of his leg, chipping his vertebrae on the way out.

The poor cat spent weeks recovering, with Laura and Ryan making sometimes daily trips to the vet and dosing him up with strong painkillers, only to struggle into the family home after being shot again.

The couple, who moved to Ross Road in May this year, said they felt someone must be targeting their cat, after two airgun attacks in a matter of weeks have left him confined to their home in fear of a third occasion.

Laura, 31, and Ryan, 30, both said their beloved cat Fitz is ‘lucky to be walking’ after the second attack saw a pellet tear through his right shoulder, just weeks after he recovered from the first assault.

“Fitz is a bit of a wanderer, so he goes quite a way,” said Laura. “One day in the middle of June, he came in the house, in extreme pain. We couldn’t touch him, or move him. We didn’t know what was happening. So, we managed to get him to the vets in the night and have some x-rays.

“The vet found he’d been shot with an air rifle. The pellet had gone through his back and come out of his leg and chipped his vertebrae on the way through.”

Fitz managed to make a full recovery from the first incident, but Laura said loose bone fragments could dislodge and press on his spinal cord, without hope of treatment.

“We weren’t sure whether to let him back out again, but he claws at the windows and doors – climbing the walls – so we just hoped it was a random or one-off, a kid messing around or something,” she said.

“We let him back out in early July, after a couple of weeks. We thought that was the end of it. This past weekend, he has come in again with a pellet wound in his front right shoulder. It has happened again and we have no clue what to do – we feel like he is being targeted by someone. We can’t let him out. He’s been very lucky to survive twice and lucky that it hasn’t hit any organs.”

After contacting the local police, Laura’s husband Ryan said officers had been knocking on doors and making enquires. He added that he had to keep Fitz inside: “We are terrified that the next time he goes out, he won’t come home.”

Laura said that Fitz is no stranger to rough and tumble. At eight months old, he broke his paw and endured two surgeries to get it right.

“I just feel like someone has it in for him,” she said. “We don’t know if he is just annoying someone by going in their garden and they’re trying to teach him a lesson, but that’s not the way to do it.

“He’s stuck in the house going absolutely crazy. We can’t let him out. We have no idea who is doing this or what is happening,” she said.

“Fitz is so sweet. I can’t believe someone keeps doing this. They’re like little babies to us. The thought of him going out and not coming back is terrible.”

The couple said they’d heard on Facebook of local people having their windows shot at with an air rifle, with residents claiming one pellet came close to hitting a passerby in the head, but so far, police have no leads as to who may be targeting Fitz.

Ryan said, “If a pellet managed to hit someone’s eye or head, it could kill. You do see these incidents on the news.

“Hopefully someone might have heard something. It could happen to someone else and they might not be as lucky.”?