Bitten by a stray kitten a long time ago in Ukraine

[anni7]

As a 7 year old i was bitten by a kitten about 4 months old. This happened in Ukraine. I was waiting in the yard of an apartment block for my father and playing with children when a kitten came from somewhere. I patted it and he bit my hand and drew blood. Back when this happened we had 40(!) injections into the stomach on a timetable when each had to be done to vaccinate against rabies. This was in the 80s.
My parents said no vaccine and only if i am scared and want one. I knew what rabies was i.e. that people die. I said ok no injections because they believed the kitten was playful. I dont think they found who it belonged to. But i dont know for sure.
I waited to get symptoms of rabies but eventually forgot about it.
I would like to find out how common is it that a kitten transmit rabies? I was at the time told this is more common in dogs not cats and there werent any reported rabies cases in the area at the time and the yard i played in was far from any forest areas.
I also read that sometimes rabies can happen over many years from the time someone was bitten.

 

[StefanZ]

As you say, its not common in cats.  BUT. Down in tropical countries people dying from rabies isnt uncommon, its thousands every year. Most from dog bites, and blood suckling bats, but some from cats too.

While in USA for example - its extremely rare.  Once a hundred years, roughly, something such.

I suppose you should be outside danger.  

 

[anni7]

Yea its been decades ago so i do think i am ok but i read once it could be as long as 15-20 years incubation but the report was unconfirmed
Also in ukraine my mother was bitten by a squirrel in the park who took a nut from her but bit her finger by accident. She also didnt have these injections. There WERE occasionally rabies in squirrels found and i remember i wasnt allowed to feed them and watch out if they behave weird. And they did - but for a different reason- because squirrels were used to being fed they chased after people in the parks. I remember running from a squirrel until i realised what it was doing!

Fortunately neither me or my mother got the rabies. There are still rabies in Ukraine and cats can i know and do cause human rabies infections. I was just curious to know how common it was or is that a kitten has rabies.
In Australia where i live now there is only bat lyssavirus

 

[anni7]

Also i read in usa rabies mostly comes from cat bites
I believe my parents didnt do vaccination due to extreme nature as they must've felt rabies unlikely but these injections were known to collapse abdominal wall in kids. I was given a choice if i wanted to go through with the injections. I knew i would die if i got rabies but decided to do what my parents advised.

 

[molly92]

In the US at least, I think I've read that 0 people have contracted rabies from cat bites in the last 40 years. And people are getting bitten by cats all the time. It's really not that common. The main vector species in north america are raccoons and bats. Rabies vaccination laws have done a good job at drastically reducing the occurrence of it in cats and dogs.

 

[Willowy]

There are fewer than 3 deaths per year (average) due to rabies in the US, and about a third of those cases are contracted outside the US. None of them (I think this chart goes back to 2003) were due to cats: http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/location/usa/surveillance/human_rabies.html

272 cats tested positive for rabies in the US in 2014. Only 7.4% of rabies cases were found in domestic animals though. Mostly it's raccoons, bats, and skunks. Smaller animals like squirrels rarely get rabies, because if a rabid animal bites them they usually die from the bite instead of living long enough to get rabies.

Of course, this is due to a high level of pet vaccination in the US, not because dogs and cats don't get rabies. So in the Ukraine I probably would have been concerned about it. But, was this a kitten that you saw frequently after the bite incident? If it was still alive after 2 weeks that means it wasn't capable of transmitting rabies when it bit you.

At least now you live in Australia where you don't have to worry about rabies at all .

 

[anni7]

I never saw this kitten before or after
I dont know to whom it belonged
So i find it odd that i didnt get the vaccine its like playing lottery.
I did read somewhere re cats rabies in USA maybe i misread.

 

[Willowy]

It's also rare for kittens to have rabies, because of the same reason small animals don't get it---they're not big enough to survive an attack by a rabid animal. I don't know what I would have done in your parents' place. . .but at least you're alive so I guess it worked out .

 

[anni7]

Yea i know. I was terrified from time to time even after we came to Australia because i read reports that rarely rabies can have decades incubation period
I also read just now that small animals arent usually dangerous but there are theoretically or really ? situations where the animal is somehow infected but doesnt show symptoms and still can infect others.
I did read now that cats dont cause rabies recently in the usa but there were relatively lot of cats found to carry them
True small animals like squirrels arent likely or rats etc
In ukraine we even heard of rabies in cows

 

[Willowy]

Oh, cows get rabies a lot. Probably more often than is diagnosed even, since they mostly get slaughtered before having time to show symptoms. There they are, standing in a field; if a rabid skunk comes and chews on their ankles they might barely notice. I think there were more cases in cows than in cats and dogs in this state. . .I should look that up. But we have plenty of cows .

 

[anni7]

I never seen a rabid cow in ukraine but i didnt live in a village