Gunned Down by an Assailant Armed with an Air Rifle and Left for Dead in a Field on the Isle of Sheppey, Oak Is Saved at the Last Minute by a Good Samaritan

Oak Spent Eight Hellish Years Living on a Nature Reserve

"If he hadn't been found, that would have been it for him."

-- R.J. Newman

Sheppey is a small island with an area of only thirty-six square miles located off the northern coast of Kent. It is sixty-eight kilometers removed from London and is administratively considered to be part of the borough of Swale.

Access to the mainland for the island's forty thousand residents is pretty much limited to the Kingsferry and Sheppey Crossing bridges. The island's name is derived from the Old English word Sceapig, which not only means sheep island but also furnishes a clue to its distant past.

Today, however, its economy is limited to a dockyard and port in Sheerness, three prisons, various RV sites, and two nature reserves. Considering the sparsity of economical opportunities available, most residents likely earn their daily bread on the mainland.

Based upon all of that, Sheppey would not appear at first glance to be all that hospitable of an environment for any cat who had been cruelly abandoned. Nevertheless, an attractive brown, white, and black tom named Oak was somehow able to have survived under those extremely trying conditions for nearly eight years.

It is theorized that he eked out an extremely meager existence by killing mice and other small animals as well as consuming discarded food. He also likely was fed handouts from time to time by kindhearted residents and tourists.

As far as shelter from the elements, veterinary care, and protection from the machinations of both human and animal predators were concerned, he was completely out of luck. This world can be, and usually is, a rather cruel and heartless affair for homeless cats.

Since cats are unable to swim long distances, he surely was either brought to the island or born there and later abandoned by his despicable owners. Countless other residents likewise turned blind eyes to his interminable suffering.

Like every other corner of England and the world at large, Sheppey breeds hooligans who get their perverted kicks by attacking cats with air guns. As novelist William Golding once observed, "man produces evil as a bee produces honey."

In retrospect, it seems almost inevitable that sooner or later one of those low-life scumbags would have trained his air rifle on Oak and his day of reckoning came sometime during the month of March in 2021 when was found motionless, covered in blood, and near death on an unidentified nature reserve. Luckily for him, he was discovered in the nick of time by an unidentified Good Samaritan who either drove him to Cats Protection in Sheerness or telephoned the charity which in turn came and collected him.

The Shrapnel Removed from Oak's Cheek Shattered Several of His Teeth

In spite of that eleventh-hour rescue, Oak was in simply terrible shape and it was touch and go for a while. Specifically, he had been shot in the face which shattered all of the teeth on the left side of his mouth.

Another pellet broke one of his legs. Press reports do not say one way or the other, but it is conceivable that he could have been shot more than twice. Clearly, his assailant wanted to either kill him or, at the very least, to cripple him for life.

"If he hadn't been found, that would have been it for him," sixty-year-old R.J. Newman of Upper St. Ann's Road in Faversham, twenty-seven kilometers west of Sheppey in Kent, and who later adopted Oak told Kent Online on February 10, 2022. (See "Feral Sheppey Cat Shot in Face Finds New Home in Faversham.") 

Although there cannot be any denying that Oak was in desperate need of emergency veterinary care, quite often the absolute worst thing that can happen to any cat, whether it be injured, sickly, or completely healthy, is for it to fall into the clutches of a veterinarian. That is because, with rare exceptions, none of them have any regard whatsoever for the sanctity of feline lives.

Secondly, they fervently believe that if they perform so much as a smidgen of pro bono work that they surely will be struck dead on the spot by a bolt of lightning. Consequently, they pressure aggrieved owners and others into allowing them to kill off their cats for a more modest fee. Administering lethal injections is sans doute quick, easy, and lucrative work and, being every bit as bone-lazy as they are greedy, killing cats in droves suits them every bit as much as a rainy day suits a duck.

Thirdly, most practitioners are by and large grotesquely incompetent and it therefore is not the least bit surprising that erroneous diagnoses are so prevalent. (See Cat Defender posts of September 15, 2017, December 11, 2021, and September 23, 2022 entitled, respectively, "King Loui I's Days of Roaming the Perilous Streets of Aachen Come to a Sad End Shortly after He Is Diagnosed with Inoperable Throat Cancer," "Socks, Coors Field's Most Famous Resident, Is Saved from the Gallows by a Pathology Report after She Is Trapped, Misdiagnosed, and Then Unjustly Consigned to Death Row," and "Domino's Years of Roaming the Campus of the University of Texas Come to a Sad End after He Is Betrayed and Killed Off by the Eggheads Who Were Too Cheap, Lazy, and Heartless to Have Taken Proper Care of Him.")

In Oak's case, the unidentified veterinarian who examined him inexplicably first diagnosed the lump in his cheek to have been a cancerous growth rather than a lead pellet fired from an air rifle. It thus would seem to be the case that some practitioners are overly eager to declare any suspicious growths or bulges in cats to be cancerous as an excuse for collecting a fast and easy fee by promptly killing them off.

That in turn segues into the thought provoking question of why Cats Protection would retain the services of such an obviously incompetent veterinarian? Even more worrisome, if Cats Protection had not been in Oak's corner, it is doubtful that either the Good Samaritan or anybody else would have come forward to have footed the bill for his treatment. Consequently, he would have been killed off on the spot.

Mercifully, saner heads prevailed and the shrapnel was removed from his cheek and his broken leg was surgically repaired and reset. It has not been disclosed what was done about his broken teeth but presumably they were surgically removed.

It accordingly is not known if he is now able to eat regular cat food or only pates. He is however able to get around on his surgically repaired leg but he is still experiencing difficulties.

Mercifully, Oak Is Now Safe and Sound in a Home of His Own

"When no one is looking at him he moves really fast, but he is a little more relaxed now," Newman related to Kent Online. "He runs and leaps like the most athletic cat ever. But when he lands on his arthritic joints, he complains about the pain."

After spending his entire life out of doors, he has been forced into making some adjustments, such as learning not to attempt to jump through glass windows. He additionally has found it all but impossible in order to break certain ingrained habits.

"If he comes across a plastic bag, he will rip it open to see if there is food in it," Newman disclosed to Kent Online. "He has clearly come across human rubbish bags before and scavenged through them."

That is a tough way to live but hopefully those horrible lean days and years are now in his rearview mirror. He has had a difficult life up until now but he somehow persevered.

Most encouraging of all, he now has an owner, a warm and secure home, plenty of food and water, and access to veterinary care whenever he needs it. That is a remarkable turnaround from that god-awful day in March of 2021 when his life came within a hairsbreadth of ending.

His amazing transformation and rebirth is additional proof that even lifelong homeless cats can be not only socialized but also domesticated.  (See Cat Defender post of July 24, 2017 entitled "A Rescue Group in British Columbia Compassionately Elects to Spare Grandpa Mason's Life and in Return for Doing So It Receives an Unexpected Reward Worth More Than Gold Itself.")

It accordingly is long overdue that shelters, Animal Control officers, and veterinarians were held accountable under the anti-cruelty statutes for using homelessness as a pretext for exterminating en masse those cats that do not have owners.

A per usual, no arrest was ever made in Oak's near-fatal wounding. Moreover, it is extremely doubtful that either Cats Protection or the police even so much as bothered to have opened investigations into the matter.

That is all the more deplorable in that similar attacks on cats appear to be rather common in the area. Par exemple, on December 6, 2018 a pretty tuxedo subsequently dubbed Angel was found by another Good Samaritan on Church Road in Throwley, a town of three-hundred residents located eight kilometers south of Favershan, with a ball bearing embedded in the bridge of her nose.

Although the projectile tore loose tiny fragments from her skull, it is not believed to have inflicted any long-term damage. That totally improbable stroke of good luck possibly could have been attributable to the fact that it is believed that the projectile was fired from a catapult as opposed to a gun, the latter of which easily could have killed her.

Angel Was Shot Between the Eyes with a Ball Bearing but Lived

"This could have been fatal for Angel but miraculously it is looking like she will pull through her ordeal," Grace Harris-Bridge of the RSPCA told the BBC on December 12, 2018. (See "Cat Shot in Face Point-Blank Range Near Faversham.")

Even though she went on to term the attack as "callous and cruel," apparently neither she nor anyone else connected to the RSPCA even bothered to search for Angel's assailant. Since she was neither microchipped nor collared, she was transferred to the charity's shelter in Canterbury, twenty-two kilometers east of Throwley, where an uncertain fate awaited her.

Shooting cats in the face with air guns with the intention of either blinding or killing them is a cruel sport that has attracted a diverse group of enthusiasts. Most prominently, both ornithologists and gardeners revel in it. (See Cat Defender posts of March 9, 2012 and March 13, 2012 entitled, respectively, "An Amateur Ornithologist Guns Down Hartley with an Air Rifle, Feigns Remorse, and Then Cheats Justice by Begging and Lying" and "The Sick Wife Defense Works Like a Charm for Cunning Patrick Doyle after He Traps a Cat and Then Shoots It With an Air Rifle while Still in Its Cage.") 

Whereas those cretins are motivated by a inveterate hatred of both cats and their supporters, juvenile delinquents who maim and kill cats for the sheer joy of doing so are believed to comprise the largest contingent of individuals who commit these types of crimes. (See Cat Defender posts of May 7, 2007, September 27, 2020, and April 2, 2015 entitled, respectively, "British Punks Are Having a Field Day Maiming Cats with Air Guns but the Peelers Continue to Look the Other Way," "Caged, Shot Thirty Times with an Air Gun, and Then Tossed in the Bay to Drown, Lovey Is Rescued in the Middle of the Night by a Good Samaritan," and "A Cornishman Shells Out £10,000 on Private Peepers in Order to Track Down Farah's Killer but Once Again Gets Stiffed by Both the Police and the RSPCA," plus the Bournemouth Echo, February 16, 2017, "Cat Which Survived Three Air Gun Attacks Is Killed after Fourth Shooting.") 

Only recently on September 13th, a seven-month-old ginger and white kitten was shot in the neck by an assailant with an air rifle on Springfield Road in Hemel Hempstead, one-hundred-thirty-six kilometers northeast of Faversham, in Hertfordshire.

A week later on September 20th, a black cat lost a leg to, most likely, the same monster on the same road. Both woundings so far have proven insufficient, however, to get any enforcement action out of the Hertfordshire Police other than their usual nonsensical jawboning.

"This is a really traumatic time for the owners and their beloved pets and investigations are continuing to establish how they became injured," Police Constable Max Robinson told the BBC on October 11th.  (See "Two Cats Injured by Air Gun Pellets.")

Au contraire, there is little doubt as to what is going on: some cretin is being allowed to maim cats with impunity. The only pertinent question is what, if anything, do Robinson and the Hertfordshire Police plan on doing about it?

The arsenal of lethal weapons available to would-be feline attackers is by no means limited to air guns but it also extends, as Angel found out, to the use of ball bearing guns and in that light she was by no means the first victim of assailants armed with these weapons. (See Cat Defender post of July 19, 2010 entitled "Molly Loses an Eye to an Assailant with a Ball Bearing Gun Only Later to Be Victimized by an Incompetent Veterinarian.")

The Ball Bearing Removed from Angel's Nose Easily Could Have Killed Her

Some of these cat-haters even have resorted to using nail guns in order to blind cats. (See Cat Defender posts of June 1, 2010 and July 6, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Grace Survives Being Shot Point-Blank Between the Eyes by a Monster with a Nail Gun but the Authorities in Sioux City Refuse to Even Investigate the Attack" and "Grace Is Out of the Hospital and Has a New Home but Her Nail Gun Assailant Remains as Free as a Bird Thanks to the Authorities' Dereliction of Duty.") 

Others use crossbows in order to rob cats of their sight. (See Cat Defender posts of June 1, 2009 and March 5, 2010 entitled, respectively, "Blind and Deaf on Her Left Side as the Result of a Bow and Arrow Attack by a Juvenile Miscreant, Valentine Is Looking for a Permanent Home" and "Struck Down by an Archer and Shunned by an Uncaring Public for More Than a Year, Valentine Finally Finds a Home.")

For those criminals who are able to get their hands on them, pistols and rifles are another proficient means of blinding and killing cats. (See Tag24 of Dresden, articles dated September 23, 2021 and May 21, 2022 and entitled, respectively, "Kater mit Schrotkugeln getötet, wahrend Besitzer im Urlaub waren" and "Dreitausend Euro Strafe! Jäger erschoss Katze, weil sie an seine Hauswand Pinkelte.")

When none of those diabolical weapons are readily available, aulirophobes can always fall back upon using plain old-fashioned rocks in order to put out cats' eyes. (See Cat Defender post of April 16, 2015 entitled "Nelson's Odyssey from Being the Long Abused Cat That Nobody Wanted to One of England's Most Beloved Comes to a Sad End at Age Twenty.")

Considering that life is already difficult enough for sighted cats, blinding them only makes their lives all that much more hellish. In addition to all of the pain and suffering inflicted upon them, not only is medicating them expensive but their newly acquired handicaps make it much more difficult in order to find homes for them.

Individuals who commit these types of reprehensible crimes, whether they be juveniles or adults, should not under any circumstances be shown any mercy whatsoever by either societies or the courts. Yet,  that is all that any of them ever receive from cops, prosecutors, and jurists.

In order for justice to prevail, individuals who blind cats should lose one of their eyes. Likewise, those who kill cats should in turn be executed by the state.

The limeys and the yanks do not want any part of such thinking but putting an end to cruelty to cats and all animals should be everybody's business. Anna Sewell summed up the matter as follows in her 1877 novel, Black Beauty:

"'Do you know why this world is as bad as it is?' a gentleman named Wright asked.

"'No,' said his companion.

"'Then I'll tell you. It's because people think only about their own business, and won't trouble themselves to stand up for the oppressed, nor bring the wrongdoer to light. I never see a wicked thing like this without doing what I can, and many a master has thanked me for letting him know how his horses have been used.

"'My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt'."

Photos: R.J. Newman (Oak and shrapnel) and the RSPCA (Angel and the ball bearing removed from her nose).