A CAT has lost an eye after being shot with an air rifle.

Eighteen-month-old Dora is at least the third cat to have been shot and seriously injured in the Huddersfield area in recent weeks.

But fears are growing that more could have been shot and either died or their owners have never realised their pet has been hurt.

Vets removed Dora’s left eye after she returned injured to her home on Park Avenue in Flockton.

Owner Joanne Ellis, 40, who lives there with her partner, 43-year-old Michael Jones, said: “Michael told me to look at Dora as he said it looked like she had lost an eye. All I could see was blackness and blood.

“Dora was on the kitchen floor looking up at us as if to say ‘help me’. It was clear she was badly hurt so we took her straight to the vet.’’

The vets operated the next day and also did an X-ray, which showed the pellet embedded just behind Dora’s neck.

Joanne, a staff nurse at Fartown Health Centre, said: “We can feel the pellet when we stroke her neck.

“It went straight through her eye and bone before lodging in the side of her neck.

“The vet found shards of lead in her and thinks Dora was looking up at whoever shot her.

“Why would anyone want to shoot a cat, especially in the eye? The vet said that if the pellet had hit her 2mm either way she would have been killed.’’

Joanne has heard that a kitten died after possibly being shot in Flockton recently and another cat had been injured.

She said there had been reports of damage caused by an air rifle at Flockton Cricket Club recently.

Two cats have recently been badly hurt after they were shot in Clayton West.

One had to have a leg amputated after possibly being blasted with a shotgun and the other still has an airgun pellet lodged in her body.