My cat injured a dog quite severely.
Every so often we see a man walking a Yorkshire Terrier past our house. My ginger tomcat is an outdoor cat but stays on the front or in the small forests close to our house with the neighbourhood cats.
I am mostly in the kitchen throughout the day and I've seen the Yorkshire Terrier trying to get from his owner multiple times to get to my cat who sits there with a lazy expression on his face. He's very brave.
Well yesterday evening I was tidying up the garden with my 6yo DS with me and somehow the man lost his grip on the leash for the tiny dog and I saw it charge barking for my cat. Cat goes rigid and yowls and next thing I know the dog is back in the man's arms with blood over his fur and my own cat has blood on himself. The man swears and storms off with the dog. I take my cat to the vet. A couple shallow bites on his front shoulder part and on his left side of his body. No stitches thankfully but antibiotic cream and bandaging and to his chagrin he has to wear a cone for a week.
Today the man came over without the dog and demanded I pay his vet bill of £600. Apparently my chubby 2 year old cat caused some large slashes on the underside of the dog that required some stitches and a bit of scratch marks on the face and over the eye (thankfully it did not damage the eye but just above it) I already paid £80 pounds for my own cat and I am barely financially stable so there's no way I could pay it when I just about managed the money for my own pet. Not that I want to or should have to. He should have kept the tiny 8 pound dog in his grip! My cat defended himself. Had the dog been any bigger my cat could of been seriously injured or killed.
I told him to get lost and shut the door in his face. He was outright rude, swearing and demanding. I now fear of the safety of my cat so I'm going to keep him in for a few weeks. Got cameras up already so the incident was caught.
AIBU to not pay the vet bill??