When Laura Porter was playing ball with her cat, Tom, on Friday afternoon (September 2), little did she know it would be the last time she'd see him alive. A few days later, the Swansea mum would find her beloved pet's body dumped in a plastic bag at the side of the road.
An examination by a local vet found that Tom had died in horrific circumstances and that he had been shot multiple times in the head. Laura has been left angered by the incident and now wants air guns to be licensed in Wales.
According to the charity, Cats Protection, there have been 95 air gun attacks on cats in Wales and England in 2021. With no official data available however, this figure is thought likely to be just the tip of the iceberg. You can get more Swansea news and other story updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletters here.
Speaking to WalesOnline, Laura described how the tragic event had left her "devastated" and "grieving". The 36-year-old from the Clase area of Swansea described eight-year-old Tom as a "good and kind" family pet.
"He was actually a stray," said Laura. "Five years ago, he just appeared in the garden, he was scruffy and skinny back then. I went round the whole estate asking if anyone owned the cat. At the time, I had just had a female cat, who was a stray as well and wasn't neutered, she came to the house and he followed.
"I would tell him 'go home, go home'. But he ended up staying and they ended up having kittens. So, I had the mum and the dad, and the two babies. I had four cats altogether.
"Tom meant the absolute world to me. They've all got different personalities but Tom was just so cute, funny, loving - the most gentle out of all of them. He was the most close to the children, he would sit with them and watch their iPads with them. He was just part of the family. The moment the kids would come home, they would ask: 'Where's Tom?'. This situation though, has absolutely broken me." You can read more stories about Swansea here.
According to Laura, the four cats had a feeding routine every day, which worked "like clockwork". Tom would rarely leave the house, Laura explained, but when he occasionally did he would stay within the street they lived on. But on Friday, September 2, Tom was presumed missing.
"Tom came in around 2pm on the Friday," Laura said. "Me and my youngest daughter were playing with a ball in the house and he used to love watching the ball going back and forth. He was being just adorable. My front door was wide open because my kids were in and out of the front garden, I was in and out myself, just busying around. And he must've wandered out - the thing was with Tom was once I had him neutered, he stopped going out really.
"What he used to do was just eat and sleep, eat and sleep - so he piled on a lot of weight. He was a big boy and he was heavy, and so he couldn't really jump on walls and so on. He never use to go far either, he'd go to the front, maybe cross the road or towards the end of the road, but he would stay in the area.
"He must've wandered out just after 2pm, and then around 4pm my daughter came downstairs asking where Tom was. I said that he had been there just a second ago and suggested he might've gone out for the toilet.
"She hadn't seen him all day so she started calling out his name. Usually, soon as we shake that biscuit box, all the cats are back in the house. She shook the biscuits, three of our cats were back but there was no sign of Tom. That's when I started thinking, that's a bit odd. Where had he gone?"
Tom missed his tea time and supper that day. The family decided to walk the whole estate in search for their cat, but Laura knew that something had happened. "I thought maybe he would've been spooked by something," she said. "Perhaps he had gone a bit further than the usual and went a bit lost."
Laura said she was awake for the whole night, part expecting Tom to return but part fearing for the worst. "I was just waiting for him," she said. "But I just knew I wasn't going to see him again." The next morning, Laura began asking her surrounding neighbours if they had seen Tom or to check their garden sheds in case he was there, but to no avail.
With the news of the missing cat spreading across the community, Laura began sharing photos and information about Tom on social media with the hope that someone might've seen him or know where he was. On Sunday morning, Laura got a message from a resident at the nearby Llangyfelach estate.
"My initial thought was that was too far for Tom to have walked," she said. "They told me there was a cat in their garden, he was black and white just like Tom, and they said he looked well-fed. I just thought I'd go and check just in case. I got in the car, drove down my street, down Long View and passed the DVLA. And then, on the grass there on the side, I saw this black bag. I just looked and felt this strange feeling that told me it won't be Tom in that garden.
"I drove back and pulled over, I walked to the bag and because it had been raining quite heavily, I could see the shape of his body, his feet and the way his body used to lay. I just looked at the bag but I couldn't open it. I just knew."
Later that day, Laura's husband decided to go and retrieve the bag and was able to confirm it was Tom's body. Due to the fact his face was covered in blood, Laura decided to take his body to be examined by a vet, where they were able to confirm that Tom had been shot. An X-ray had found five bullets in Tom's body.
"When they told me that, it felt like my heart had been ripped out," she said. "What this has done to me has been horrific. I haven't had any feelings down my arms for the last few days, I can't eat, I can't sleep - every time I shut my eyes, I just see him.
"It's not just grieving, I've lost pets in the past, you grieve and get over it. But in this case, my mind can't stop, it's constantly trying to figure out what happened to him - he was there one minute and then he was gone from me, someone took him from me on purpose, to do that on purpose. What's even more upsetting is that I have this feeling that whoever took him was on my doorstep and heard me calling for him, they heard my children call him, they've put him in a black bag and chucked him to the side of a road."
Laura has contacted South Wales Police but feels that more should be done to ensure a similar incident won't happen again. "There needs to be something in place to protect our communities," she said. "If you could do that to a poor innocent animal, something that is loved, then you can commit murder in my eyes.
"It's not just a cat, he was a part of my family that was taken away from me. This person needs to be stopped - it's so dangerous and to know they've done it on purpose. To know that someone is out there, close to where I live, with a riffle or an air gun, surely that in itself is dangerous, especially in this area where children are playing around. This situation has left me devastated, heartbroken, and it's made me ill."
South Wales Police have been contacted for comment.
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