Virginia Cat Finally Returns Home After Two Weeks Missing, Then Vet Discovers A Shocking Truth

Joanna had always felt at ease letting her tuxedo cat, Betelgeuse, roam their neighborhood in Gloucester, Virginia.

From the moment he was a kitten, he’d been fearless — curious, adventurous, and completely confident in his indoor-outdoor world. Their street felt safe, and Joanna trusted that her clever little cat always knew the way home.

But a few months ago, that trust was shattered. Betelgeuse didn’t come back.

Hours dragged on. Days stretched into nearly two weeks. With every passing moment, Joanna’s worry deepened. Her heart sank as the reality set in: her beloved feline companion had vanished without a trace.

She was just about to hang missing posters when she suddenly heard a faint, familiar cry. The sound was coming from her neighbor’s backyard.

Joanna rushed over, and what she found broke her. There was Betelgeuse, but he looked nothing like the lively, fluffy companion she knew.

She could hardly recognize him, as she shared in an interview:

“He was back there and it took me a while to get to him. I didn’t recognize his face, he had lost a lot of weight, and he had dry blood over his chest and on his face.”

Joanna scooped him up and rushed him straight to the vet. They quickly stabilized him, ran bloodwork, and for a moment, it seemed like maybe things weren’t as bad as she feared.

But then the X-ray results came in, and what they revealed left everyone stunned.

There, lodged in his little body, was shrapnel. Betelgeuse hadn’t been hit by a car at all. He had been shot in the head.

The bullet had entered near his nose, shattered his palate, and exited through his neck. It was nothing short of a miracle that he was alive at all, let alone strong enough to crawl back toward home and cry for help.

Joanna was devastated, sharing:

“I was horrified, and so upset. I was living a nightmare.”

Luckily, the bullet had missed his vital organs. Betelgeuse had surgery, and now a metal plate is helping keep everything together while his body heals.

Joanna has been feeding him through a tube, but she’s grateful every single day that he survived.

Animal Control officers began investigating whether this was a freak accident or a cruel, deliberate act. But no matter what they uncovered, one thing was certain: Betelgeuse had endured something unimaginable.

Through it all, his sweet personality never changed. Joanna recalled how even in those first hours, despite the pain and trauma, her brave boy purred when she picked him up. She shared:

“There’s not a mean bone in his body. So that again is just hard to believe that someone would hate a cta that much.”

Betelgeuse still has a road to recovery ahead, but with his fighting spirit and Joanna’s love, his future looks much brighter.

Stories like this show just how strong animals can be. Betelgeuse may have been a victim of cruelty, but he’s also a living symbol of hope and resilience.