Veterinarian Issues Stern Warning About Rabies

     A cat with obvious neurological symptoms was brought into All Pets Medical Center on Waterhouse Road in Bourne last week, seriously worrying Dr. Annette Herbst, a veterinarian and owner of the center. The outside cat had not been vaccinated.
     “Rabies,” Dr. Herbst said, “is fatal. If you have rabies, you will die.”
     While there is a reasonable time frame after exposure to rabies when vaccination can prevent the start of the disease, there is no shot, no antibiotic, nothing that will change that eventuality once the rabies virus has taken hold, she explained.
      “It’s here. It is not a maybe,” she said of the animals on Cape Cod that have tested positive for rabies, including at least one cat.
     Rabies is primarily a disease of animals, but humans could catch the virus if they have been scratched or bitten by a rabid animal, and thus been infected by that animal’s saliva.
     Dr. Herbst raised the possibility with the pet’s owner that the cat had rabies, explaining the risks, and that the symptoms warranted her to quarantine the cat for at least 10 days.
     The owner quickly asked, “Can’t we just do a blood test?”
     Then the doctor had to explain that, in order to quickly test for rabies, the cat’s head would have to be removed and then sent in for testing.
     Because the cat was already showing symptoms. Dr. Herbst knew that if the cat had rabies, it would be highly unlikely for it to survive the quarantine.
     In the meantime, however, the family had to make a decision to start rabies shots.
     Rabies usually has an incubation period long enough to allow the body time to develop antibodies to a vaccine given after an exposure, according to a fact sheet provided by the Immunization Action Coalition. The US Centers for Disease Control recommends immunization as soon after exposure as possible.
     The treatment is both very expensive and very painful. A person who has never before received any rabies vaccine will first be given a dose of rabies immune globulin, a substance that contains antibodies against rabies. That dose will give the person immediate, short-term protection. That treatment is followed by additional doses, given on days three, seven, 14, and 28 after the first shot.
     Luckily for this cat’s owner, the pet’s problem proved not to be rabies. Its condition also proved to be treatable.
     The whole experience, however, prompted Dr. Herbst to remind cat owners, in particular, that all outside animals should be vaccinated.
     While even inside animals could come in contact with, for example, a rabid bat that has become trapped inside, outside animals are most at risk.
     Vaccinating an animal, in contrast to the series of shots needed to prevent the disease were a human to be exposed, is not expensive, she said, and the cost is well worth the “horrible, horrible” risk of contracting the disease.
     If the cat that came in with rabies-like symptoms had been vaccinated, she would have given it a booster shot and not had to deal with the rabies fear.
     Dr. Herbst, like most veterinarians, has been vaccinated, so the scare was not personal. For most people, that level of protection is not necessary against the small possibility of contracting rabies.
     Protection for outside animals, however, is not only mandated by law, it is also a necessary precaution, she said.
     At this week’s board of health meeting, Bourne Health Agent Cynthia A. Coffin said that no new rabies cases had been reported. Dr. Herbst thinks, however, that now that rabies has come to Cape Cod, it is not just going to go away.
     Dr. Herbst wants all pet owners to be fully aware of the risks they court if they have unvaccinated pets.