Man thought gunshot wound to chest was a cat scratch

NEWS AND COMMENT-MALWARA VILLAGE, RAJASTHAN, INDIA: Nemi Chand was asleep. He felt a slight pain and believed that he had been scratched by a cat on his side. He thought that the cat wanted to wake him up as domestic cats do. We don't know if this was his cat but the story indicates he lives with a domestic cat.

We are told that for seven hours Chand ignored the pain in his rib cage and continued to sleep with three others. An empty bullet shell was found next to him at which point he believed that someone had tried to kill him.

He was treated. An x-ray revealed that the bullet had lodged under his skin and just avoided vital organs. Surgery removed the offending bullet and he is expected to make a full recovery.

Bullet removed from Nemi Chand. Photo: Jam Press.

Comment: a strange story with some unanswered questions. When bullets are fired from a pistol there is a loud bang! You would have thought that he would have woken up when the pistol was discharged. Chand seems to have a very high pain tolerance! The kind of pain you get from a cat scratch is going to be quite different to that from a bullet wound.

Thankfully he survived. We are not told anything else. For a cat lover it would be nice to know a bit more about his cat!

That would add a little bit of meat to the bones of this story. Basically I'm more interested in the cat than Mr Chand. 😏

I'm only kidding because it's a serious story but surely he would have seen from the wound that it wasn't a cat scratch?! I mean, come on, you can tell the difference between a cat scratch when a cat is trying to wake you up and a full-blown bullet wound.

To expand on that topic a little bit: cats do like to wake their owners up in various ways. I remember my late female cat waking me up by nicking my nose with one of her claws. She would protract the centre claw-just the one claw-and nick my nose with it, which always successfully woke me up as you can imagine. 

It left a small scratch on my nose which is not what I wanted at the time. I can tell you that that scratch did not feel like a gunshot wound! Although, I have never been shot by anyone so I'm guessing but I gunshot wound must hurt tremendously.

It looks as though the bullet was a .22 calibre and I'm going to guess that the firearm was pretty crude which is perhaps why the bullet simply lodged under the skin rather than passed through Chand. It also calls into question how far away the shooter was at the time. They may have been outside of his home which is why he didn't hear the gun go off.