Matthews, NC – Family: Hi. Our 2 year old cat has never been been outdoors or even been around another animal. He seems to be drooling.
Vet: OK, he probably just got into something he shouldn’t have. Here’s some medicine.
Family: Coolio. By the way, we had him vaccinated when he was a kitten. Are we supposed to get him a booster shot at some point?
Vet: RABIES! Your cat is rabid! He must die!
Family: Dude. You just said –
Vet: This is a hair-on-fire emergency. I’m calling the Health Department.
County Health Department (on phone to Vet): Too many people have potentially been exposed to rabies from this cat. Cat must die!
Family: No see, our cat’s never been outside or been around other animals, like we said. There’s no risk of rabies here.
Vet: Rabies Will Robinson!
So the vet killed the family’s pet, cut off his head and sent it to the state lab for rabies testing. The results were negative.
Drooling is a very common reaction in cats and stems from a wide variety of possible causes. Some cats drool when they are being pet, for example. But maybe they are all rabid too. And the rabies vaccine this cat had received may still have been offering protection anyway – not that he needed it, since he was strictly indoors-only. But yeah, rabies. I mean: RABIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And if all the violent hysteria associated with a drooling cat isn’t enough for you, WCNC in Charlotte ends their story with this tidbit:
NBC Charlotte checked with the county and looked over the law. Officials say quarantine was not an option because too many people were potentially exposed to rabies, and rabies is 100-percent fatal.
Why is the number of people potentially exposed even an issue? The cat didn’t walk across the laps of a stadium full of people between home and the vet’s office, did he? If the size of this family was smaller, would the cat still be alive today? And since “rabies is 100% fatal”, which gives the impression that extreme measures must be taken even in highly questionable cases, I guess somebody should let the CDC know they may as well chuck their post-exposure vaccination protocols since everyone is going to die. No exceptions. Least of all for cats who drool and their families who love them.
(Thanks Clarice for the link.)