LEE COUNTY, Fla. (WBBH) – A Florida man is facing an aggravated animal cruelty charge after deputies said he shot a neighborhood cat with a BB gun.<\/p>\n
Lee County deputies arrested Nicholas Laney Saturday for animal cruelty.<\/p>\n
What the arrest report says<\/p>\n
According to the arrest report, the stray cat, which neighbors call Tubby, killed Laney\u2019s chickens.<\/p>\n
A neighbor heard shots from the airgun from the backyard and heard Tubby screeching. A couple hours later, the cat showed up limping with a broken leg.<\/p>\n
Neighbors react<\/p>\n
Yesenia Saenz, a neighbor, said she was sad to learn the cat was shot in the leg but was not surprised to learn who allegedly did it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel so bad for it. And it breaks my heart. It. And no animal should deserve to be hurt or anything by a human being at all,\u201d Saenz said.<\/p>\n
Saenz said Laney accused her of letting her husky eat his chickens, which she said never happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was really nice up until he accused us of my husky eating his chickens, which actually never happened. All his chickens were out in front of the the lawn. He grabbed my husky by the neck and was like, next. Next time you have this f**king dog on the lawn. I\u2019m going to kill her. Kill her,\u201d Saenz said.<\/p>\n
Saenz said Laney later told her the only reason he did not hurt her dog was because he loves all animals.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was like, oh, the only reason I didn\u2019t kill her was because I love all animals, and that\u2019s the only reason he never hurt her or anything,\u201d Saenz said.<\/p>\n
Neighbor Lee Mclaws said the area is not zoned for livestock.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t the chicken neighborhood. This is not farm. It\u2019s residential. So chickens shouldn\u2019t have been here. It should have been in it\u2019s yard fenced in,\u201d Mclaws said.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 WBBH via CNN Newsource. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEE COUNTY, Fla. (WBBH) – A Florida man is facing an aggravated animal cruelty charge after deputies said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,152250,152246,152255,152247,152252,152249,152254,152248,152253,152251],"class_list":["post-378911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-fort-myers-bb-gun-cat","tag-fort-myers-cat-shooting-arrest","tag-is-shooting-a-stray-cat-a-crime-in-florida","tag-lee-county-animal-cruelty-charge","tag-lee-county-cat-shooting-arrest-news","tag-lee-county-sheriffs-office-animal-cruelty","tag-nicholas-laney-animal-cruelty-charge-details","tag-nicholas-laney-arrest","tag-what-happened-to-tubby-the-cat-fort-myers","tag-who-shot-the-cat-in-fort-myers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}