"My first bow kill, lol," veterinarian Kristen Lindsey posted to Facebook after shooting the cat she believed was feral. It wasn't.
A Texas veterinarian will not be allowed to practice for a year after a photo of her posing with a dead cat she killed with a bow and arrow emerged last year.
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Kristen Lindsey posted the controversial photo on social media in 2015.
She said she thought it was a feral or wild cat but it's believed the feline was actually a family's pet named Tiger.
"My first bow kill, lol," she wrote on Facebook in April 2015. "The only good feral tomcat is one with an arrow through its head! Vet of the year award ... Gladly accepted." The message even used a cat emoji in the text.
After the post was put up, animal lovers took to the streets to protest.
She told Inside Edition: "At the time I made the Facebook post, at the time that it happened, in my mind, I had killed a feral cat. There is a feral cat coming to my property, I had issues with it, I killed that cat."
The vet was fired from the animal clinic where she worked. Making matters worse, her lawyer said she received death threats from people angered by the photo.
"To think that your face is going to go viral across the world, that is not something you think about and it did and it was terrifying to wake up to know that people in Switzerland want you dead. That is terrifying," she told Inside Edition.
She was not criminally charged, but on Tuesday she learned she would lose her vet's license for a year followed by four years of probation.
Her lawyer, Brian Bishop, told the Associated Press: “This case would never have gone forward but for the fact that we live in a social-media age.”
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Bishop said in an email to the Washington Post that he and Lindsey were “disappointed” with the Texas Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners decision to have her license pulled for a year.
“We are also disappointed that the Board has, for all intents and purposes, chosen to take sides in the culture war between the animal rescues zealots — who have campaigned to destroy Dr. Lindsey and her family — versus rural property owners who have the right to protect their property and their own animals from feral animals who are destroying their property and threatening their own animals,” Bishop told the Washington Post.
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