Family appalled after pet cat is shot in Chicago's northwest suburbs
CRYSTAL LAKE, Ill. (CBS) -- A Crystal Lake family is shocked, saying someone shot and paralyzed their cat this past weekend.
Police were in the family's neighborhood Thursday, looking at doorbell cameras after a family's confusing discovery. The family remains shocked that such a thing happened.
Kylie Rodriguez says she took her cat, Timmy, to the vet this weekend after they came home to find him with a wound on his back, unable to stand on all four legs.
"She was like, 'Well I'm going to show you the X-ray. You're going to be really surprised, but there's a bullet,' and I was like, I was just so taken back," said Rodriguez. "I was, that was not even going through my mind at all that that was what it was."
The vet said the item lodged in the cat's spine was definitely a bullet—it was too large to be a BB pellet.
When Rodriguez and her family checked their own cameras, they found the cat been hurt less than an hour after they left in the morning. He was seen crawling back home, dragging his hind legs.
This means Timmy couldn't have been far when it happened.
"It's just horrible," Rodriguez said. "It's so sad that somebody would hurt like an innocent animal, and it's Timmy, if you know what I mean."
Rodriguez and her family have had Timmy for a year. He was a stray who showed up at their home and became a part of the family—going with them on walks, but wearing a collar and Apple AirTag so they could keep an eye on the orange tabby cat.
Rodriguez thinks it's highly unlikely anyone mistook Timmy for a predator.
"You can't say that you were doing like self-defense," she said. "This cat—this cat right here—you think this cat is going to hurt you?"
Rodriguez also said firing a gun at all in the area was reckless and dangerous.
"And even if it was a coyote or bobcat, you should not be shooting a gun in a residential neighborhood. My kids—literally, I have an 8 and a 5-year-old boy—and they play outside here in the wetlands. They play forest games. And there are so many kids on this street," she said. "You should not be shooting a gun here no matter what it is."
This family already spent $1,000 for emergency vet bills, and willing to offer a cash reward for more information that leads to an arrest.
"I don't want him to live like a sad life, you know?" Rodriguez said. "I just want him to be like he was."
The next step is to take Timmy to a specialist to see if anything can be done to improve his mobility, and to see if they can find out who would have dared do something like shoot him.
CBS News Chicago has reached out to Crystal Lake police to see where their investigation stands, but had not heard back late Friday.
Meanwhile, If anyone wants to follow Timmy's story, he has an Instagram account