A CHERISHED family cat targeted by sick air gun thugs THREE times in the past has been found shot dead in a Bournemouth back garden.

Stunned owner Kathy Batten believes four-year-old Whisper, a pure white male cat, was killed by someone living close to her Ensbury Park home.

Now the grandmother-of-two has launched a leaflet campaign warning neighbours to keep their pets inside.

Kathy, 66, said: “It is awful, they’ve nearly killed him before but now, on this fourth time, they’ve finally done it.

“I think there is a maniac out there.

“If you don’t like cats you shoo them away with a bit of water - you don’t shoot them with a gun.”

Whisper, who was killed in Glenmoor Close on Monday afternoon, was first treated for airgun wounds in November 2014.

On that occasion the Daily Echo reported he’d been hit through his back, bowel and intestine.

Worryingly, vets treating him back then also found two other pellets in his body - proving he’d been the victim of a previous airgun attack.

Then, in the summer of 2015 Whisper was shot for the third time - the air weapon pellet smashed one of his legs.

Describing Monday’s fourth and final attack, Kathy said: “My husband was working in the garden, where he was also playing with the cat.

“He came back in to put his tools away, went back out into the garden, and the cat was laying under the table dead.

“So it happened within a matter of 15 or 20 minutes.

“The vet thinks the pellet has hit a vital organ.

“He may not have been shot in the back garden - he may have been shot nearby and the adrenaline got him back here. But, either way, it must be someone living close by.

“I’m looking at all my neighbours thinking ‘was it you?’ It is a horrible thing to be living with.”

“He was a much-loved member of the family.”

Police were contacted in the aftermath of the fatal shooting and officers have since launched an investigation.

Kathy said: “I am so angry now, I have to find out who is doing this. I’ve written out flyers and I’m going to put them through doors warning people to keep their cats in.

“This person has to be stopped. The day this happened, there were children playing in their back gardens - suppose the pellet had ricocheted and hit one of them?”

Witnesses should contact Dorset Police via 101.