A MUM is warning pet owners to be on their guard after her cat was shot in the leg.

Stacey Lucas was horrified to find her three-year-old cat, Blue, had been shot with an air rifle near their family home in North Avenue, Canvey.

Their pet, a British blue breed, escaped with only a surface wound, which clearly showed the shape of the pellet, and so far has not needed veterinary treatment.

Miss Lucas, 30, said: “On Sunday morning, my little boy Harrison just said Blue had a hole in his leg.

“It was clearly off a pellet, but the wound was quite clean.

“I was fuming, I was just so angry I wanted to go and knock on everyone’s door to find out who has a pellet gun.

“You get dog walkers and little kids playing over the fields backing on to my house, but I would like to think a child wouldn’t have an pellet gun.

“I didn’t hear anything. I don’t know whether someone has done it from their window, or if it has been done during the night. Were they thinking he was a fox?

I don’t know what people think when they do something like this.

“It is worrying. If someone has done that, obviously they are going to do it again. I’m worried it’ll happen to my other cats or my neighbours’ cats, as they all cats.

“Blue is going to be kept in side now. I have two other cats and they tend to stay around the house, but I will be keeping them in as best I can.”

A vet has told Miss Lucas to keep checking Blue’s wound and to take him to the surgery if it gets any worse.

She added: “He is just resting up. Usually, he just goes into our garden and into the field to have a run around, but now he is in most of the time, and if he goes in the garden he runs straight back in.”