Bend cat shot by pellet gun, recovering

A cat is recovering from a very close call after being shot by a pellet gun in a northeast Bend neighborhood last weekend.

The 2-year-old cat is doing well after the shooting, which happened in the Providence neighborhood, east of 27th Street and north of Highway 20.

Mary Ann Adler has lived in Bend for two decades and said Tuesday she’s never had to worry about letting pets or children outside — until Saturday, when Adler’s cat, Vivian, was shot by a pellet gun.

Adler said she thinks Vivian was in the backyard when it happened. She said she didn’t realize it was a pellet at first, because she could only see blood and matted hair. But she took the cat to a veterinary clinic, where the vet found a pellet and shrapnel in Vivian’s shoulder.

Adler said it’s frightening to know that happened in her neighborhood.

“It could have been my dog, it could have been a kid, somebody could have gotten hurt, and it’s just really sad that someone would do something like that. And it makes me feel unsafe,” Adler said.

The vet said if the pellet had been a half-inch to the left, it would have killed Vivian. It’s too risky for the pellet to be removed, so Adler will just have to wait and see how Vivian’s wound heals. Until then, she said, Vivian isn’t the same cat she was before Saturday; Vivian is much more skittish and nervous than she used to be.

Adler filed a police report and officers conducted interviews around the neighborhood to try to find the culprit.

“You feel safe in a cul-de-sac, and in a neighborhood in the dead of town. You should be able to let your cats out, and you can’t control where your cats go,” Adler said. “If a cat is bothering you, don’t shoot it, try to find out where it belongs. She has a tag on her.”

This isn’t the first time pellet guns have shown up in Bend neighborhoods.

Suzanne Landry, who lives off Northeast Purcell Boulevard, said her son’s car window was shot out with a pellet gun. And she has neighbors who have had the same thing happen.

“I just hope that when it comes time for us voting that we need to put more monies in our police department,” Landry said. “Bend is growing, and it’s wonderful that we’re growing, in most ways. But it’s also really necessary that we have the police force to be able to go around our neighborhood and keep our neighborhoods safe.”

Landry said some neighbors have filed police reports, and she said she actually found some CO2 canisters belonging to pellet guns on the ground in her neighborhood. But she said for right now, she’s not going to change how she secures her cars and home — she just hopes it stops.