An abandoned kitten that triggered a multi-state public health investigation in the United States after it tested positive for rabies should serve as a reminder to the public of the need to exercise caution when confronting unknown animals, health authorities say.
It's a warning being echoed in southern Manitoba, where rabid skunks have been recently reported to have chased horses and snapped at animal control officers in Brandon.
The kitten was found at a girls' softball tournament in South Carolina last summer, where it was handled by athletes, coaching staff and parents from at least four states. The animal bit at least two people, and 27 people needed a course of rabies vaccinations because of the contact they had with the cat.
"Our message is that we want the public to be cautious with their interactions with unfamiliar animals," said Dr. Kira Christian, a veterinarian and disease outbreak investigator with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Christian is an author of a report on the incident published Thursday in the CDC journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
"We understand that this was a group of kids and it was a cute, cuddly kitten being passed around. However, we want people to take from this report that if it's an unfamiliar animal, you don't know its background, it's not owned or (is a) stray, then we would advise against having much interaction with that animal."
The saga started on July 14, when one of the coaches found a seemingly healthy kitten in a garbage bin at one of the fields used for the tournament. She put the kitten in a box and took it to at least six games that day, where it was petted by players, parents and others.
After the tournament the coach took the animal back to North Carolina with her. Almost immediately it started showing signs of illness. It also bit the coach's housemate, who later took it to an animal hospital for care. The kitten had to be euthanized.
The animal hospital didn't intend to test the kitten for rabies because the coach's housemates had signed a release saying the animal hadn't bitten anyone in the previous 10 days.
But another person who had been bitten, a mother of a member of a North Carolina team, heard what happened and drove to retrieve the dead kitten on the day it was set to be cremated. She brought the body to her local health department for rabies testing.
The North Carolina state laboratory confirmed the animal was infected with the usually fatal virus, setting off alarm bells in public health departments in North and South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.
The bitten woman's foresight and perseverance may have averted a tragedy.
"We are all thankful for the astute mother," Christian, who is assigned to the South Carolina health department, said from Columbia, S.C.
Rabies in humans can take months to develop to the point where symptoms become evident. In the early stages, symptoms are vague and can be confused for influenza or similar illnesses. But Christian said it's likely that if anyone had been infected through contact with the kitten those cases would have come to light by now.
Authorities strongly recommend that people who may have been bitten or scratched by a rabid animal or who came in contact with a potentially rabid animal's saliva get rabies shots, on a protective basis.
Given soon enough after exposure, the shots are highly effective at preventing development of the disease. Left untreated, rabies is virtually always fatal. In fact, survivors are so rare that scientific articles on them are published in leading medical journals.
Getting people to avoid skunks is no real challenge. But convincing people that stray kittens or baby raccoons also pose a rabies threat can be a harder sell, public health officials admit.
Dr. Paul Varughese, a senior adviser with the Public Health Agency of Canada's division of immunization and respiratory infections said people need to use care around both wild and stray animals.
"There is no way of knowing whether a stray animal is rabid or not, based on the symptoms alone," he said, adding it could be hard to determine whether a wild animal lashed out at a human because it was afraid or in the early stages of rabies infection.
Varughese said exact figures aren't compiled of how many Canadians get post-exposure rabies shots every year, but he estimated it is somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 people. Human infections in this country are rare; only three cases have been reported since 2000.
Exposure can come from a variety of wild and domesticated animals. In 2006, the most recent full year for which statistics are available, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency reported 229 animals tested positive for rabies in this country. The animals included dogs, cats, cows, horses, skunks, raccoons and foxes.
