62 thoughts on “She totally deserved it”

  1. Absolutely totally deserved it.

    I just hope she didn’t retaliate with overwhelming force later…that cat deserves a warm indoor spot and a bellyrub after a generous portion of choice noms.

    b&

    1. “Sanilac County officials picked up the cat and tested it for rabies. To do that, ‘Buddy’ had to be put down. The tests came back negative.”

      No choice noms for Buddy. He is with Ceiling Cat now.

    1. I knew she was going to get an infection. Cat bites are nasty – my dad’s friend was on an IV drip when his own cat bit him.

        1. Ha ha! I meant because his cat bit him. This cat he had was the kind of crazy that when you’d go there, the cat would come out of nowhere and bite your achilles tendon. I think the cat bit him when he was rescuing her from being stuck under the porch or something. His current cats are much friendlier.

          2. Yeah but it was funny. My brain must’ve taken a little vacation and let my fingers type whatever they wanted.

      2. My mother actually got cat scratch fever – dum dum dum – from their own cat in Africa. Her arm swelled to about 3 X its normal size. Kitty was forgiven cuz she hadn’t meanta scratch…

      3. Indeed. This is where so many err when they think that the prey that their cats play with but let get away “look just fine.” They can look just fine and be dead in a few days or less from infection.

        (Something I know from personal experience, having tried to rescue field mice, voles, and even one of my own budgies–looking wholly intact at the time–that some cats of ours relinquished over the years. When it happens now–even indoor cats come up with a field mouse now and then–I just release the animal outside and try to put it out of my mind.)

      4. Curiously enough, Baihu is constantly scratching up my shoulders from holding on, and not uncommonly batting at my hands when we play patty-cake, or launching stealth attacks at my legs from under furniture as I walk past, and I’ve never gotten even an hint of an infection.

        On one of our earliest walks, when we had just gotten back to the driveway, the neighbor boy approached and Baihu got spooked and tried to climb up my arm and launch himself off my hand. One of his hind claws dug pretty into the outer base of my left thumb. The wound healed pretty quickly, but I do still have a scar. But, again, no hint of infection.

        Either he’s a clean cat, or my immune system already knows what to do with whatever he’s got.

        b&

        1. Bites are usually the most dangerous.

          That said, my daughter, when she was in middle school, was seriously bitten by a stray cat she was holding when something spooked it. The cat just chomped down on her forearm, leaving deep puncture marks on both sides. When daughter came in she was nearly in shock–pale, shaking, cold yet sweating; but amazingly there was no subsequent infection.

          At that point I was ready to take the cat to a shelter but my daughter argued strongly against that; we ended up having that cat for the rest of his life, and he never bit again.

          1. Baihu’s even gnawed on me a few times, such as in the midst of a vigorous game of patty-cake / wrestle-the-cat when I’ve gone for the belly. Not in attack mode; I’m sure I’d have seen my own tendons were that the case. But you know how cats will sometimes grab a favorite toy and hold it close while they sink their fangs into it before leaping backwards and swatting at it, and then using it for a pillow? That sort of thing, but with an arm. I’ve seen kittens do it with each other, too.

            I don’t remember him breaking my skin with his teeth. He might have. I know he left dent marks.

            b&

    2. The photo purportedly of the attack victim holding ‘Buddy’ the cat after she took him in as a stray is misleading. It is not the same cat – the cat who retaliated to her repeatedly kicking snow at it (and probably also kicked it) has a tabby back that reaches its neck, whereas the cat she is holding has a completely white back, so I very much doubt her story.

  3. Looks real to me. I saw this earlier today and read that the dog ran away from that evil woman too.

    1. At least she didn’t kick the cat but I bet that cat wouldn’t let her get away with it if she tried.

    2. Cat to d*g: “What are you lookin’ at? You want a piece of me? Well, do you?!”.

      I don’t think that cat takes poop from anyone, reminds me of my cat, and the d*g is smart enough to want no part of it.

  6. The story said that the cat was tested for rabies. I may be wrong but I’ve always heard that an animal would have to be killed to determine if it was infected with rabies.

    1. If the animal is a healthy domestic dog, cat or ferret it should be confined and held for observation for 10 days. A licensed veterinarian must examine the animal at the beginning and end of the 10-day observation period. If the animal develops symptoms suggestive of rabies, it should be humanely destroyed and the brain sent for testing. If the animal is healthy at the end of the 10-day period, then no rabies exposure occurred and the person bitten will not need rabies shots.
      http://www.ndhealth.gov/disease/Rabies/QandA.htm

      1. LOL you beat me to it. I found the same page. Wikipedia says in humans:

        ….several tests are required to diagnose rabies because no single test is sufficient. Samples of saliva, serum, spinal fluid, and skin biopsies of hair follicles at the nape of the neck are all tested.

        I wonder why they can’t just test animals the same way. Maybe too cheap to do it?

        1. Once you develop symptoms (including sensations at the bite site) the prognosis is extremely poor. As there is no animal txment for rabies, animals presenting with symptoms consistent with the disease are euthanized to look for pathognomonic inclusions in the CNS which can guide therapy decisions in the affected patient.

        1. They killed it. You don’t want to wait ten days to start treatment if you might have rabies.

          1. I see that now in the news story in the update Jerry posted.

            Damn. Not good. Unless there’s recent history of rabies in the region, I don’t think it’s justified, either.

            b&

          2. Have a look at any posts on this blog:

            http://naturalunseenhazards.wordpress.com/2013/12/15/canada-british-columbian-woman-and-dog-attacked-by-coyotes-while-walking-popular-trail-chikungunya-virus-spreads-in-the-americas-travel-warning-39-die-of-plague-in-madagascar-rabies-reports-fr/

            Toward the bottom there is always a list of rabies incidences, widely distributed across both the US and wild/domestic species.

            Small risk per capita, of course. But an ever-present scourge for which the stakes couldn’t be higher.

          5. “I was under the impression that rabies was better controlled.”

            I know. But there’s an essentially untreatable reservoir out there. (Can we inoculate every bat? Etc.)

            It’s rare, and yet in the almost 30 years I’ve lived in rural MI I’ve seen a rabid fox, a rabid skunk, and a rabid deer. (All presumably rabid–one I didn’t report, one disappeared before I could report it, one was unfindable when the DNR agent came out (with firearm) and walked the property with me.

            A neighbor up the street has seen rabid cows (documented).

            (BTW, I do recommend that book I mentioned. There’s just something perversely spellbinding about this co-evolved (with many species), deadly, ancient, persistent, yet seldom epidemic virus.)

          6. Now I’m sad. They didn’t need to kill the cat! I wouldn’t have ratted out the cat if I had been bitten though I guess the cat could have spread rabies if it were infected but still, I don’t like the idea of killing an animal to determine rabies. Isn’t there a better way?

          7. There’s a protocol involving a ten-day observation period, but I wouldn’t at all be surprised if the woman insisted on the instant results method if she had any say in the matter.

            b&

  7. Spraying a little water at a cat is considered a harmless yet effective way to get them to move. I’m not 100% convinced she wasn’t essentially trying to do just that. At very least “totally deserved it” doesn’t seem like a lock.

  8. The woman is clearly trying to get the cat to go away. Where is it’s owner? Why is it running loose? It looks to me like she has a valid basis for a lawsuit against the irresponsible owner.

    We used to have the same problem with roaming cats in our neighborhood, but we trap them and take them to the pound. If they come back again, they go to a local farm.

    2. Cats are not d*gs. You can’t just easily fence them in. Most jurisdictions don’t have laws against cats roaming around without a leash. Are you taking people’s pets to the pound? Seems rather extreme if it’s a cat.

  9. Dunnow Jerry, that looks like one mummaloving vicious feline.

    If it had been harassing her (small) dog in her own garden, trying to shoo it away by kicking snow at it is fairly low down in the cruelty stakes.

    And I have NEVER seen a cat go for the face of a standing human being.

  10. Cats that run loose are a nuisance. It’s not like she was throwing rocks at it. If that cat was annoying her dog or treading on her property, she had every right to shoo it away in a humane manner.

  11. Poor woman! Glad that she is recovering. She says she will continue to take in strays (like she did with Buddy) despite what happened. It’s a sad situation all around–injured woman, dead cat.

  12. If she wanted the cat to leave, she should have at most spritzed it from a distance with the garden hose. Frankly, I don’t see why the cat needed to vacate what’s clearly not her property in the first place.

    Instead, she took an incredibly hostile and threatening stance, no different from a bully getting in somebody’s face.

    Hopefully, the woman will learn from this that threatening violence to somebody much more vulnerable than you is likely to result in a disproportionate offensive response; few other options are tenable, especially if — as I strongly suspect — the bully has shown pattern and practice indicating that this won’t be the last menacing action.

    TL/DR: the woman, knowingly or otherwise, threatened to kill the cat. The cat only left her with minor flesh wounds. The cat wins this round, on every level, including morally.

    b&

      1. …my post was in response to one by Jon Rockoford which the Invisible Paw of Ceiling Cat has apparently (and reasonably) chosen for smitage, in case it seems a bit out-of-context….

        b&

  13. But how can she deserve it? She has no free will. There’s no such thing as moral responsibility. She could not have done otherwise.

    By all means, let’s be clear that no one should behave so cruelly to a cat, and anyone who does should expect to receive similar treatment. Indeed, by sharing this video and by reinforcing those points in comments, we help spread the meme about not being cruel to cats, and the result is less cat-directed cruelty.

    But we can have all that and at the same time extend our compassion to the unfortunate and unwise woman in the video.

  14. Interesting that the person recording, you can hear breathing etc., offers no exclamation or such for what that person is seeing? Seems an automatic “oh sh*t” or something similar would be offered up as to the unexpected attack.

    1. Question: how convenient was it that this person happened to be there, recording the whole thing?

      Or is it just that we humans now record virtually everything we and those near us do, and only the juicy bits make it to YouTube? Although, there’s plenty on YouTube that is mundane and superfluous to the extreme.

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