A couple hours later after letting her cat Koko into the backyard, Jeanette Ykema began preparing Koko’s usual noontime treat.
Normally, Koko is quick to pounce on the treat. On June 18, it was a different story.
“Nothing happened,” Ykema tells CTV.
“I thought an odd thing might have happened, maybe she got out for whatever reason, so I walked up to the end of the deck.”
Once there, Ykema noticed that Koko was in an odd position – all four legs were in the air, and although her eyes were open, she wasn’t moving.
She took Koko inside. When she set Koko on the floor, Koko collapsed, unable to stand under her own power.
Unsure of what had happened, Ykema took Koko to her veterinarian, Harkesh Sharma.
Sharma X-rayed the cat and found a small metal pellet lodged in her spine.
“When it goes into the spinal cord, it’s the worst-case scenario,” says Sharma.
“Koko was already paralyzed. Prognosis-wise, it’s not very certain.”
Koko entered surgery, with Sharma successfully removing the pellet.
By the next day, the cat was moving her front legs a little bit and Ykema was becoming optimistic about her future.
“I was all excited to take my little one home,” she says.
The following day, she did just that.
But Koko’s homecoming soon turned into a nightmare. Ykema watched as her cat fought its own paralysis in an attempt to reach her food bowl.
“She dragged herself on her back legs, using her front legs, and kept falling over and over, hitting her head against the table,” she says.
“It was so heartbreaking to see. She never did make it to the food.”
Koko died not long after.
Ykema says she still wants to know how that pellet became lodged in Koko’s spine.
She thinks a passerby with a pellet gun must have shot it at the cat – and probably trespassed on her property in the process, given that Koko was fenced in and unable to leave the yard.
Birds in the neighbourhood – near Victoria and Frederick streets in east Kitchener – have also been found shot dead.
