Your veterinarian may recommend radiographs, sometimes called X-rays, to locate any shot in his body.
Lead ammunition is unlikely to cause harm if it’s embedded in muscle. However, it does cause problems if it ends up in a moist or acidic environment, such as the stomach, a joint, or an inflamed area.
As it disintegrates, the lead is absorbed into the blood and transported throughout the body, causing gastrointestinal and neurologic toxicity. In addition, lead damages the red blood cells that carry oxygen.
Lead harms other species as well. People who eat prey killed by lead ammunition have 50 percent more lead in their blood than normal. This occurs because lead bullets and shotgun pellets crack on impact, spreading lead debris and fragments throughout the game animal’s body.
Songbirds, ducks, and geese often ingest scattered lead shot and bullet fragments with their food. Also poisoned are the animals that prey on them and the dogs, cats, and wildlife that ingest ammunition when they scavenge the remains left by hunters.
After you take Buck to his veterinarian, consider a visit to the hunting store to convert to nonlead ammunition.
I know early handling leads to friendlier kittens. Are other factors responsible for personality development in cats?
Bear in mind that it’s common for multiple tomcats to breed a female while she’s in heat. Because they have different fathers, the kittens in the resulting litter may have very different temperaments.
Another factor that affects a kitten’s personality is environment, both in the womb and during the first few months of life. These environmental factors include the mother cat’s nutrition and stress levels during pregnancy, litter size, and how effectively each kitten competes for food and warmth.
In addition, kittens that are well socialized between 2 and 12 weeks of age are friendlier to familiar and unfamiliar humans than kittens that receive no early socialization.
In one experiment, veterinary behaviorists studied 13 litters of kittens sired by multiple tomcats, varying such aspects of the kittens’ care as whether they were housed separately or together, the age at which they were weaned, and how often they were handled.
Several times during each kitten’s life, the researchers tested friendliness to humans and response to physical restraint. They found the most significant determinant wasn’t the kitten’s care but which tomcat had fathered the litter.
