Vampire Weekend

It is usually not a good thing when your wife, very early in the morning, calls up to you from the kitchen asking you to, "Please come down here now."  Her tone suggested not alarm, but at least a sense of urgency.  I immediately scrolled through my memory bank for scenes from the night before.  Had I left the lid off the peanut butter?  Forgotten to flush in the guest bathroom?  Uh-oh, maybe it was the cat.

 Let me back up a step here.  Three days prior, on Memorial Day, our eighteen-year-old cat had some health issues.  Like maybe end-of-life health issues.  Vomiting, labored breathing, and lethargy led to a trip to the animal  hospital.*   There she was subjected to diagnostics and treatments more befitting Colonel Steve Austin.  Luckily, the bill came in at (barely) less than six million dollars  and Mama Cat returned home, perhaps not better/faster/stronger, but, to Amanda's and our daughter Grace's great relief, healthier than Monday morning.  Forgive me for thinking of our two cats in terms of $$$$$; I'm just a little jaded by years of eye surgeries, specially formulated senior cat food, and a visit to a kitty orthodontist. (Yes, that's a thing.  No, we did not go all in to get the kitty dentures.)   Our cats feel more like mail order brides - we pay a lot for companionship.  So when I heard Amanda calling from the first floor, I wondered if Mama had suffered an expensive setback.

Fortunately, Mama was okay.  Instead, upon entering the kitchen, I found three animals.  Our two cats and the dead bat they had apparently killed overnight.  Yes, a bat.  Winged demon of the night.  Purveyor of nightmares.  Flying rodent.   In other words, not a guest I want in our breakfast nook.  I guess the vets really were miracle workers.  Two days earlier, this cat could barely breathe on her own, now she is Mama Cat: Vampire Hunter.  I promptly scooped up the rug on which the bat was laid out placing it gently (alright, with a slight thud) in the outside garbage.  I am not squeamish, but I am, as I may have written about a time or two, a giant germophobe.  I panicked a little, wondering exactly what the dark beast hand landed on while in the house.  Did it play around in the fruit bowl?  With no air traffic controller awake to tell him, "Negative Ghostrider, the pattern is full", did he buzz the toaster and drop guano bombs in the bread slots?  With my mind racing, I ignored more important questions.  Amanda brought me back from the brink momentarily, then pushed me right over.  "I'm curious how he got in here," she wondered aloud, "and we need to think about rabies."  RABIES?!?!  Suddenly, I heard nothing but the insistent belch of a submarine dive horn.  Yes, indeed, we should think about rabies.  I don't want rabies.  I don't want our cats to be rabid.  Methinks that would make them more annoying than usual.  Of course, that would be about my luck to have the cat gingerly and expensively nursed back to health only to be felled by rabies days later. 

What's that you say? Shouldn't the cats be fine because they are up to date on their rabies vaccinations?  Not so fast, my friend.  Our cats our indoor cats only.  Assuming there was minimal risk, we gambled figured there was no rush to get their most recent shots.  The vaccinations have lapsed by a bit.  Only a problem when the outdoors comes inside like it did this week.  Genius.
 
To ward off the hypochondria, I set about figuring out what steps we needed to take to make sure our family is safe.  The health department told me we are not in an emergency situation; we can afford to get test results back on the bat before proceeding.  I fished the deceased bat out of the garbage so he could be shipped off to Baltimore for testing.  Then I made the terrible mistake of jumping on the Googles.  I read stories of humans contracting rabies because it is possible that you can be bitten without feeling it.  Seems suspect to me, yet if it's on the internet it must be true.  True enough, anyway, to plant the seeds of hypochondriac hysteria in my brain.   I managed to steer clear of reading about symptoms of rabies in humans, otherwise I would feel all of them within minutes.   The health department informed me we would have test results by today or possibly not until Monday.  If the bat is rabid, we learn the protocol of what happens next.  Thus begins our weekend of waiting.  If you need me, I'll be over here expecting my salivary glands to kick into overdrive, or my face to melt off, or whatever other horrible things I imagine happen as you grow rabid.  In the meantime, please pass the Count Chocula.  

*Holiday rates may apply.