In Which Ethan Tortures the Cats August 18, 2005 Lauren This was taken shortly before Doug bit Ethan on the arm. This was taken shortly before Pablo bit Ethan on the arm. Both cats approached us of their own free will. Big mistake.
My Cassie does the same thing. She will come up to you and rub against you so you can pet her. Or climb up and sit on your shoulder and rub your head. Then she’ll purr and enjoy the petting, until she decides to bite you. It’s as if she’s saying 10 strokes is all you’re allowed. Number 11 gets you a bite.
If Ethan could have seen the look on Pablo’s face there, maybe he wouldn’t have been smiling so much.
Ahhh, the good ‘ol kitty torture! Peanut does the same thing, but mostly none of our 3 cats will let the kid anywhere near them. Peanut got to play with two kittens recently. I wish I would have taken pictures of how he was holding them; it was hilarious because he was sooo proud of himself.
Those cats are huge. My Uncle has a cat that allows about three strokes on the head, anymore then it is bitting time
We have a cat who bites us. Lynn on the arm and me on the tip of the nose. Never draws blood, but when we scold her she effects a righteous countenance as if to say “How dare you reject my love?!”
look, it’s a widely known fact that cats are telepathic. they regularly give warnings to stupid humans to stop doing whatever annoying thing they’re doing (& they’re always doing something annoying!). they are, in fact, quite patient & forgiving with us. it’s not their fault we’re so slow. and c’mon: if someone were to start scratching your head, sure it would feel good for a bit. but after awhile the thrill wears off. that, coupled with chucks under the chin, some tail &/or ear pulling, not to mention the usual messing up of carefully arranged fur patterns & the inevitable “who’s a widdle cuteypie chubbybuns puddytat?” … well, who wouldn’t lash out in frustration? anyhoo, be glad your felines haven’t added “clawing lips so very early in the morning” to their general routines…
Actually, that cat Joel mentioned turned vampire cat yesterday and bit me on the neck. And then was surprised when I put her out of my lap for that.
My own cat that slept on my pillow when he was a kitten bit me today at the vet’s – that was his final move; his opening gambit was peeing in his carrier and spreading the wealth all over me when I got him out of the carrier so the nice people at the veterinary clinic could clean it. Since the last time this cat bit me and broke the skin I wound up in the hospital, this meant a quick visit to the doctor for antibiotics (with kids) followed by a trip to the drugstore to pick up antibiotics (with kids), all after the trip to the vet with three cats (and kids). Edmund the Cat, however, found out that after you bite at the vet’s, you get held by a nurse wearing leather gauntlets up to his shoulders, and you get your anal glands expressed anyway. Never heard a cat swear like that in my life.
that’s too funny about capturing the peaceful moments before the cats lash out. supposedly over 80% of cat bites become infected, so anytime the skin is broken/punctured, get him on some augmentin (unless penicillin-allergic). have a fun weekend and charge up your battery for school 🙂
Not only do they become infected; they become infected with a nasty little organism called Pasteurella multocida: Local: P multocida infection most commonly presents as an infection complicating an animal bite or injury. Complications include rapidly progressive cellulitis, abscesses, tenosynovitis, osteomyelitis, and septic arthritis. The latter two are particularly likely in cat bites because of the small, sharp, penetrative characteristics of feline teeth. And when this quote says “rapidly progressive” – they’re not kidding. I had a serious cat bite about five years ago from my cat Edmund – actually three bites, total, I think – and shrugged it off as painful but not dangerous. The hand was unusable due to swelling and pain within six hours. Within twelve hours there were red streaks to the elbow; within eighteen hours, to the shoulder, and I was sitting around wondering if I should call the doctor. Incidentally, the answer to that is “yes”. When the doctor saw my arm, she sent me straight to the emergency room. Wouldn’t let me stop in the office to hand over my copay. I had IV antibiotics, X-rays to rule out tendon involvement (would have required opening up the arm to wash it out), and had to stay overnight; my arm also served a useful educational purpose – a gentleman with a hand injury was walked into my semi-private curtained area off the emergency room, the doctor pointed to my arm and said, “You do not want your arm to look like THAT.” I was told that, when treatment was started, the infection was within a few hours of reaching my heart. Do you know how many times I heard, from various doctors, that “cat bites are bad”? I’m not sure, but after the third time I was ready to strangle them, except that Edmund got both hands; if they’d gotten near my feet they’d have been in trouble. Any cat bite that breaks the skin must be washed out immediately, with soap and water, and watched for signs of infection, so you stay healthy enough to hunt down the cat afterwards. Just kidding; Edmund lived to bite me again.
Are cat bites really that serious? Hmm…either I’m insanely lucky, or I’m misinterpreting the definition of the word “bite”. My cat bites me a lot, and the skin breaks, but in more of a scratch-like manner than bite-through manner. I don’t think he’s ever broken the skin just by biting; the skin breaks when I recoil in pain and his teeth scratch across my skin. If that makes any sense…
That’s what I call a “nip” – a play or warning bite. A cat that’s trying to cause damage does not muck around with warnings; it sinks ’em deep. Your normal house pet doesn’t do this except under severe stress – my first Edmund bite occured when he got out. He’s an indoor cat, so we skip the vaccines for diseases that are only a concern for cats that regularly come into contact with possibly-infected cats – FIP and so forth. Well, there he was, facing down an unknown cat, possibly stray, and there was no time to grab a towel or a hose; I grabbed, he bit. I knew I’d get bitten when I grabbed him; I just didn’t know it would be that bad. Second bite: he was having his apparently painful anal glands squeezed. Again, no warning, and if I hadn’t been scruffing him I’m sure the bites would have been as deep as the first one I got from him. In other words, a cat under stress behaves differently from the same cat under normal circumstances, and should not be assumed to be safe. It’s the deep non-warning bites that are most dangerous, as the bacteria are placed deep in the flesh and the bites are hard to wash out.
I think it’s called cat scratch fever – when the wound reacts like that. I don’t have to worry about it bc they say if you’ve been around cats since the infant stage, generally you are immune to it. I’ve been biten lots of times by cats, but I still wash it simply because I clean it then put a bandaid on or something. For some reason, a scratch or bite by a cat hurts like a papercut.
Cat scratch fever is caused by Bartonella bacteria and involves swollen lymph nodes and other such pleasant things. The bacterium in cat mouths that causes a deep bite to be dangerous is Pasteurella multocida, and you can certainly get a nasty infection from it despite a long history of cat association; I’ve been living with cats all my life and I still got a nasty infection. It’s very difficult to clean to the bottom of a deep cat bite because cat teeth are thin and sharp – you get bacteria in the deepest part of the bite, and P multocida spreads very quickly. In other words, any serious swelling at the site of a cat bite needs treatment as quickly as possible.