Stray kitten report 2: yesterday, first petting session accepted! But as soon as the little one saw it was coming from my hand, it was a shock. We're making progress. No photos this time, so I sketched a quick comic to remember it and share with you.
@davidrevoy haa! I've petted cats like that. Loving it up to the moment they realize it's a human hand doing it 🤣🥰
@DrJLecter @davidrevoy just be prepared to snatch the hand back really fast. I ended up with a frozen finger joint for 3 months after a feral kitten decided to Attack the finger.
@oddhack oh dear 😱😱 cat bites and scratches can be so vicious and dangerous. Glad it's fine again. @davidrevoy
@DrJLecter @davidrevoy trying to explain to my doctor what had happened was also challenging. I told her I had been bitten by a Feral Kitten and then spent several minutes patiently explaining what "Feral" meant. Conceivably it was a language issue as she was originally from India, though her English was otherwise perfect AFAICT.
(Not that "Feral" has all that much bearing on what bacteria are in cat saliva, I suspect).
@oddhack @DrJLecter Yes, that's a risk and I'm taking care. I have been attacked by a stray cat years ago in panic, and I know exactly the risk: deep bites and claws (got arm "bunny catched", not playfully but real). Especially the feeling of receiving almost 1cm of claws fully under skin; directly in muscle. I was lucky I could self heal myself with treating it as a regular infection (alcohol, etc), and I had no post infection. But the pain and the duration to reconstruct the damage was long!
@davidrevoy @oddhack @DrJLecter Alcohol is a poor disinfectant for wounds. Better than nothing of course, but it's best to use modern antiseptics, like the mix of octenidine dihydrochloride and phenoxyethanol, which is sold under brand names like Octenisept, Oktaseptal, Help4Skin SEPTI-SPRAY, etc.
@mirabilos @davidrevoy @elgregor @DrJLecter ditto that. Mine was late evening and I considered going to the ER, but decided it was not worth $10K of copays, cleaned it up myself, and went to urgent care early the next morning for debriding / tetanus / antibiotics. That might have made healing take much longer since they had overnight to establish a population in the finger joint that was Chomped.
Now that I'm in Portugal I'd just immediately go to a hospital, of course.
@davidrevoy @elgregor @oddhack @DrJLecter and bites are even worse than claws due to the bacteria that can grow anaerob and the tooth is so thin at the tip that it basically buries them in a fold that immediately contracts again, and apparently (I read all of this when we were new pawrents) they can make the flesh die off under the skin even, so every cat bite that perforates the skin is a case for the emergency treatment; you were lucky