It entirely depends on the patient. If the cat/dog is there for an annual wellness and vaccines and they scratch you during a nail trim then you definitely don’t have to worry about rabies. But if someone brings in a cat off the street that seems to be acting funny, has some sort of bite wound, etc, then you should worry. Rabies is serious enough that if something seems concerning to you, get help. But the likelihood of you encountering a rabid animal (depending on where in the country you live) while working at a general practice office is very low. I’ve seen just one. Don’t be afraid to say you’re not comfortable handling some random scary animal that doctors think is a rabies risk. But 99% of the scratches and bites you get won’t be from animals that seem like they’re at risk of transmitting rabies. In this field you’ll be scratched tons and tons of times. You’ll learn to figure out which ones are concerning and which ones aren’t.
Yea that’s the kind of cat you don’t have to worry about. If the animal isn’t out and about interacting with wild animals, you mostly don’t need to be concerned about it having rabies. At least in my area of the country. Unless by some fluke a cat was bitten by a rabid bat that got in the house and the owner had no idea, and then brought the cat to the vet for a wellness visit a week later. But that shouldn’t be a thing that most people will ever have happen.
psssst this is getting dangerously close to practicing (human) medicine without a license. While the information might be accurate, if something were to happen the bolded phrase could leave you in a position to be sued. Even if it’s all in good faith. Now that you’ve worked at a vet clinic and are enrolled in the vet school, people will take your medical advice seriously, so you need to be extremely judicious who you give it to/ what you say.
I appreciate you looking out, but it really doesn’t sound like I’m giving anywhere close to medical advice. It’s akin to someone saying “someone who just got back from a trip to Africa sneezed on me. Do I have Ebola?” It’s not medical advice to say “probably not.”
Yea no problem! I do want to specify just in case though, while there is a 1 in 83,000 chance (in my state at least) that any individual cat will be carrying rabies, always use your judgement and seek help if you feel you need to.Thank you for your reply! Since I am quite new to all of this, I really appreciate you giving me your advice and thoughts and in no way did I think that you were trying to give medical advice haha!
Agreed! I also think that in general, vet med people know way more about rabies and rabies exposure than human medical people do, simply because I don't think most doctors have a lot of encounters with patients who may have had rabies exposure.
That's interesting because I've heard owners lie about all kinds of things but I haven't heard someone lie about whether their cat is indoor only or whether it goes outside. Most people seem to be fairly up front about that, particularly because it can have a big impact on a lot of medical decisions and treatment
I’m just relaying what I was taught in our public health courses. I’ve also been taught to take the “yeah my cat is never outside” “my dog never gets human food” etc type of owners lying with a massive grain of salt.
That being said, no. Rabies isn’t traditionally transmitted through scratches alone. The virus is inactivated when it dries. But when it’s rabies and it has a ~99% fatality, it becomes a question of if you really want to risk it. Especially with someone else’s life.
I had a husband and wife in the exam room and the wife was answering all the questions and she definitively said “indoor only” and it turns out the husband had been letting the cat outside from time to time for fresh air, without the wife knowing.
Especially when there’s NO WAY that my dog was exposed to weed. How dare you insinuate that???
This isn’t someone saying “no there’s no way you’re gonna get rabies from this.” OP is very worried about rabies in situations where it’s low risk. It’s just as important to know when you need to worry about rabies as when you don’t. Client owned, vaccinated animal with no known rabies exposure that bit someone because they became stressed during an exam? You’re far better off learning better handling techniques to prevent bites than being concerned about getting rabies in that situation.
I’m just relaying what I was taught in our public health courses. I’ve also been taught to take the “yeah my cat is never outside” “my dog never gets human food” etc type of owners lying with a massive grain of salt.
That being said, no. Rabies isn’t traditionally transmitted through scratches alone. The virus is inactivated when it dries. But when it’s rabies and it has a ~99% fatality, it becomes a question of if you really want to risk it. Especially with someone else’s life.
I would literally be ****ing LIVID if my partner was letting the cats out without my knowledge, lol (which he of course doesnt do)I had a husband and wife in the exam room and the wife was answering all the questions and she definitively said “indoor only” and it turns out the husband had been letting the cat outside from time to time for fresh air, without the wife knowing.
Clients be crazy sometimes.
(oh hey the urine drug results came back positive for marijuana and cocaine)
Oh that wasn’t a judgment about you. I think it’s very understandable to be worried about a disease you don’t know much about
Getting bit frequently while working shouldn't be acceptable whether the patient is at high risk of having rabies or not. Cat bites can and do get very very nasty quite quickly, leading to people needing to go to the ER and getting put on IV antibiotics. You will easily owe much more than $1000 for this. If stray cats are frequently biting or scratching people who work at your clinic (or really, any animal), protocol needs to change somehow. That's just not safe, even disregarding rabies.
They lie about ANYTHING and EVERYTHING. They lie about rabies vaccines. They lie about animals going out. They lie about medications they’ve given their pet, even if you ask about very specific things (e.g. human NSAIDs, previously rx’d Ear meds for other pets, etc...). They lie about what the pet eats. Because for many people their first instinct is to tell you what they think you want to hear. Not what is the truth or what is going to help their pet.
I agree completely, in this situation OP is very very very unlikely to get rabies from this cat. But. As OP admitted, she suffers from GAD and recently, hypochondriac. I would be concerned that the next time she gets scratched specifically by a similar case she would be worried again.
Ok so this is interesting to me because I consider my cats indoor only, but I occasionally take them out on a leash and harness (like my avatar shows
). When the vet asks if they are indoor, outdoor, etc, I say they are indoor only but go on the leash outside occasionally. I could see how someone would neglect to mention the second part if they weren't super familiar with vet med.
But since there was a potential human exposure, you can’t vaccinate the cat right away against rabies...
There’s nothing in the NJ rabies confinement and observation guide that says you shouldn’t vaccinate against rabies if there’s human exposure. It just says to vaccinate.
Does your state not have a rabies compendium?
I just double checked. It actually says to vaccinate within 96 hours of exposure.
That’s just weird. The 96 hour thing is what is done here if just the animal is exposed. But if human exposure, it’s a ten day quarantine of the animal before vaccination, then observation for four months after.
That’s interesting. I’m surprised that NJ doesn’t do that then if most other states do. I mean we told the guy to go to the doctor and try to get rabies shots just to be on the safe side, so we did our due diligence.
On that same note, it can be extremely confusing. My insurance said it wasn’t covered. Walgreens said it is and I haven’t paid anything. This has happened to tons of people. Because rabies is a vaccine given to so few people for pre-exposure, insurance companies are really stupid about knowing if they even cover it.
