Ew.

A few days ago, our precious little kitty (Stella) was busily tearing the stuffing out of a little toy mouse with her teeth, and I happened to walk a little too close to where the carnage was happening. We generally don't mind when she pounces, because she doesn't have front claws (no comments about what horrible people we are...if you want to read the blog of someone who doesn't declaw her cat, go somewhere else). This time, however, was an exception. I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but she pounced on my foot/ankle, a flurry of orange fur, white teeth, and back claws, and quickly ran away, leaving me startled and a little bloody.

As a looked at my leg and swore, I remembered that there is this thing called "Cat Scratch Fever," and it is a real, honest-to-goodness sickness. So I thought I'd look it up online to see if I was at risk. The web pages I saw mostly talked about the same thing. Kittens are more likely than cats to pass cat scratch fever. If a cat scratches you, wash the wound with soap and water. Watch for unusual discolorations or swelling. Don't let cats lick any open wounds.

Did you catch that last one? Because that was the advice of MORE THAN ONE web page. You know what that means, don't you? That means that people have let cats lick their open wounds. You would think that people would automatically assume that cats (or anything else for that matter) should not lick open wounds. Apparently, that is not an automatic assumption, because these web sites felt that it was necessary to note that licking wounds was something to avoid.