An Orange Park couple believes a gunman is targeting cats in their neighborhood.
They found their pet, Boomer, shot with a pellet gun outside their home in the Heritage Hills neighborhood.
They say neighborhood cats have been disappearing and now they think they know why.
X-rays show Boomer still has the pellet inside of him.
“That’s like his son,” said Boomer’s owner, Marie Busson.
“The boy I never had,” said her husband Michael Busson. “They become family. When you don’t have your own kids, when they’re grown up and left the house, your pets become your kids. And when someone’s mistreating your pet, it’s like mistreating your child.”
They hope parents will talk to their kids about how they use their pellet guns.
“Maybe your children have pellet guns or BB guns and you think it’s, like, cute that they’re firing them. But maybe you need to monitor them and see what they’re really doing,” said Marie Busson.
In the meantime, Boomer is struggling to adjust to the life of a strictly indoor cat.
“When he goes to the door or he goes to the window, you open the window and he’s right in front of the screen. He just, he’s so frustrated that he can’t go outside anymore,” said Michael Busson.
The Bussons have not decided whether to get him surgery to remove the pellet.
This isn’t the first time local cats have been shot with a pellet gun.
Action News Jax reported in September that multiple cats were also shot at Baymeadows apartment complex The Park at Trapani.
Cox Media Group
