WWYD. My daughter got bit by a neighborhood cat UPDATE

[Katy]

There was just a story on NPR the other day that a Florida Fish and Wildlife worker in Monroe county (the keys) was bitten by a sick looking stray kitten and had to get rabies shots because there had been multiple incidents of rabies detected there that month, including in at least one cat.  I think maybe the other two were raccoons. The story was about the travesty that the hospital there charged her $42k for the first shot and some immunoglobulin when she could have waited a day and gone to the county health department and been charged like $1700. Especially because when the new law went into effect that hospitals must publish their prices online the prices for those procedures dropped to something like $7k less than two weeks later.

[Zuzu822]

31 minutes ago, Pen said:

 

Yikes.  Scratched in eyes sounds bad.

There used to be a map of USA rabies cases Available maybe on CDC site, but I don’t see it now.  

NY and that part of country has had more rabies issues in domestic animals  than some other parts.  

I think this has included dogs imported from other countries with fake rabies vaccination certificates.  

And it may not be impossible for an indoor cat to have contact with a wild animal  that gets inside.  Though vaccinated plus  indoor animal seems to be extremely low risk.  

 

It was such a weird thing to have happen! The kitty is now four years old, and he and the son in question have always been BFF. No lasting damage! 

And yes, to incidents of rabies in NY. We had something in the news just in the last month about a rabid animal in either my county, or the one next door! I can't remember now if it was a raccoon or a dog, however, so I'm not very helpful. 😛 The health department's attitude toward our incident was irksome, but I guess anything is possible. 

Found the news articles! There was both a feral cat positive for rabies in the neighboring county in January and a rabid raccoon last month. 😞 

ETA2: Last summer the same area (very rural) also had confirmations of another rabid feral cat and a bat.

Edited March 7, 2019 by Zuzu822
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[Pen]

1 hour ago, Zuzu822 said:

 

It was such a weird thing to have happen! The kitty is now four years old, and he and the son in question have always been BFF. No lasting damage! 

And yes, to incidents of rabies in NY. We had something in the news just in the last month about a rabid animal in either my county, or the one next door! I can't remember now if it was a raccoon or a dog, however, so I'm not very helpful. 😛 The health department's attitude toward our incident was irksome, but I guess anything is possible. 

Found the news articles! There was both a feral cat positive for rabies in the neighboring county in January and a rabid raccoon last month. 😞 

ETA2: Last summer the same area (very rural) also had confirmations of another rabid feral cat and a bat.

 

Our area had a house pet cat last year.  Sad.  Luckily the owners recognized something was wrong with the cat and no one was bit.  

The description of cat who bit op ‘s Ds as being “confused” could be a bit worrisome.  Presumably “confused” isn’t describing a rabies mental symptom, but it also isn’t giving a sense of totally normal.  

[Pen]

10 minutes ago, Arctic Mama said:

Rabies is so sad!  Whenever an animal looks disoriented and drunk in terms of movements I get suspicious.  That and the aggression are what I was always told to look for, but the lack of coordination was a big indicator.

 

Poor kitty 😞

 

Yes.  Poor kitty.

I think the film is useful because the cat looked fairly normal and shy at first, and even later on the way it seemed I could imagine finding a cat (or fox, raccoon, bat, cow, horse, dog...) like that as a child who loves animals and thinking it was sick or injured, but perhaps not think of rabies.  

 

Edited March 7, 2019 by Pen

[ktgrok]

THIS type of thing is why I always advised clients to keep their pets up to date on rabies, even the indoor only cats. Because if something random happens, like the refrigerator repair man steps on the cat's tail and it bites him while startled, you want that paperwork! Different areas my have different procedures to follow, but here it was quarantine at a vet if not up to date on vaccines, or euthanasia with brain sent to the state lab.