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Rabies
Rabies
One afternoon, I heard voices in our foyer so I walked downstairs to see who was there. I
found a man breathlessly telling my wife about one of our cats attacking his daughter. I thought
his story unlikely as the cat in question had occasionally bolted from the room after suddenly
I sat down on the stairs as the man continued a frantic monologue about how the cat
might have rabies. I calmly reassured him that the cat had been vaccinated (it was wearing a
collar and a rabies tag), and told him no one in Maryland had contracted rabies in more than a
quarter of a century and that last unfortunate individual got it from a bat.
But in the end, the cat got quarantined, the man subjected himself and his daughter to a
needless series of rabies vaccinations, and I got a lesson in the power of fear to overwhelm
common sense. (If anything he probably should have been worried about Cat Scratch Disease,
Rabies is a viral disease that attacks the central nervous system. It is horrible way to die.
Until 1885, when Louis Pasteur gave us a way to prevent rabies with a crude vaccine, the bite of
a rabid animal was a death sentence. It still is if a rabies infection goes untreated or undetected.
But in the Western World, pets are seldom the source of human rabies cases.
According to the disease experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) in Georgia, there are only one or two cases of human rabies in the U.S. each year.
In Maryland, raccoons are the most frequent carriers of the rabies virus. Skunks, foxes,
bats, cats and groundhogs are the other major carriers. Cats are high on the list because their
owners neglect to have them vaccinated and they get bit by wild, rabid animals.
Rabies 2
The raccoon’s claim to fame comes from giving other animals—including unvaccinated
pets—rabies. They are nocturnal animals so we seldom see them and therefore people seldom
get rabies directly from them. (Last spring, a Virginia man proved the exception to the rule by
being the first person in the state to die of raccoon rabies. No one knows how or when he came
Worried about the spread of large numbers of rabid raccoons, pubic health officials in
Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont and West Virginia have been air-dropping
rabies vaccine since 1997. The vaccine is contained in tiny plastic sacks hidden in cubes of
It’s an air war designed to create a population of rabies-free raccoons, which will act as a
barrier to the spread of rabies. Think of these immune raccoons as the bricks in a furry Berlin
of animal rabies in Anne Arundel County (where I live) dropped from 97 in 1997 to 18 in 2003.
But when it comes to aerial combat, the bat may have us beat. Most of the human rabies
cases recorded by the CDC during 1990-2000 were from bats. Unlike raccoons, we can’t bomb
Just how dangerous is evident from a case described by two veterinarians from
Maryland’s Center for Veterinary Public Health. Two years ago, Drs. Beth Karp and Clifford
The owner said the cat was old and never went outside. She saw no reason to keep up the
cat’s rabies vaccinations. After all, if the cat never went out, how could it possibly get rabies?
Three months after the bat got inside, the cat developed obvious neurological symptoms
and behavior changes, and eventually attacked its owner. The cat had to be destroyed and the
woman had to get the standard five rabies vaccinations and a dose of anti-rabies
immunoglobulin.
“This case demonstrates the need to continue to educate the public about the risk of
rabies associated with bats and emphasizes the importance of keeping all dogs and cats current
Maryland requires all dogs, cats and ferret owners to have their animals vaccinated and
boosted on schedule. The typical vaccine costs $5.00 and a booster shot is required every two-
three years. Pet owners and people wanting to learn more about rabies and bat-proofing their