What Became of Old Marmalade

During a pleasant evening walk a few months ago, my daughter and I were petting an orange cat that suddenly grabbed me around my leg and bit me on the shin, leaving four neat fang impressions. I let it go for a few days, but all it took were a few people to say or suggest the "r" word and the incident began to weigh on me. I had listened to a Radiolab podcast on that disease years ago, and not only did I skip parts of the episode, I also quit listening to that program. I didn't need to know that a horror movie infection actually exists, and once it takes hold, science doesn't really have a cure.

So after about a week, I felt as if I were taking a risk with something you can't take risks with; costly precautions could be worth the chance I was throwing away resources. I remembered we had a vet as a neighbor, so hoping for reassurance, I texted her, explaining what had happened. How high is the incidence of rabies around here? The reply was ambiguous--just what I didn't want to hear. Rabies is actually rare; however, I should call the health department, because they would want to track down the animal and figure out its vaccination status. Oh, great.

I began to feel weighed down. As long as I didn't know the outcome and had to wait out a weeks-long incubation period to find out, I was infected and not infected simultaneously. I began to long for time to pass and deposit me safely on the other side of this suspense. Would I see Thanksgiving? Christmas? My pre-Marmalade life seemed rich and full, and I wanted it back. How nuts that this tiny choice of stroking a seemingly sweet kitty would put me in this situation. My sister, a public health nurse, had told me the chances that it was a rabid cat were pretty much nil, and that I should forget all about it. But somehow, it felt irresponsible to just let it go.

The warm, polite lady at the health department took my information and told me she'd call back that day. I ended up calling her back, and she apologized, saying she'd been swamped. What I found out in my conversations with her was that a.) we should try to find the cat; b.) if we couldn't locate it, the series of three shots were expensive, even with insurance, and most bitees opted out even though the department recommended them; and c.) animal bites are so common that they dealt with reports almost daily. She took down my description of the area where the fateful meeting occurred so that animal control could track it down. "It was toward the middle of 3rd Street," I said. "And the house had a skinny little sidewalk out front."

My call with animal control didn't go as well. This lady sounded a bit irritated. "You don't have any more information than that?" she asked. I had thought those were pretty good directions. "I see a house like that here, but I'm not going to knock, just in case it's the wrong place." Okay. I would just have to take on this quest myself. "Mike" at the health department, who called a week later to check in with me, recommended that I try to find this animal. With his casual fluency in the science of the disease, he sounded like a doctor. From him, I learned that the last human case of it in our county occurred in the '90s (I didn't really want to know that), and when it did show up, it was usually in bats. And we hadn't even had an infected bat in 2024. Like the first staff member I'd talked to, he said I had "a lot of time." A couple of weeks, even.

Soon after, I hit the streets with my daughter, walking up and down 3rd. Although the walk was refreshing and I chose some exquisite autumn leaves, we turned up no orange kitties. My daughter petted an old brown one in a front yard--seems it's common for them not to wear collars around here. I could now see why the animal control lady was unhappy with me. With all the houses on this street, my description couldn't have been more vague. I had provided next to no guidance. Thankfully, intuition took over, and there was a house that gave me a "feeling" we were close to where the cat had emerged. I even knocked on a door or two, explaining my situation to a startled then sympathetic neighbor. But no luck.

I wasn't done yet. We went out again, but this time, only had a few minutes to case the area from the car. We kept going back to the house that gave me those cat vibes, and as I went up to knock on the door, saw that a woman was just driving off in an SUV from a back alley. The guy who lived next door, no doubt wondering what this car was doing creeping by at ten miles an hour, answered my knock and courteously squelched my hopes by saying that nobody owned cats in that house; in fact, it was a vacation rental. Back to square one.

We decided to drive around the block, even investigating the alley, and as we made a turn, my daughter called out "Orange cat! Orange cat!" I got out to speak to a friendly older man on his front steps working some kind of pelt. He had an orange kitty secured to the stairs with a length of leash so it could investigate the yard without getting into trouble with strangers or cars. He said he never let his cat run around the neighborhood. However, he had seen a tom of that description around, and he would keep an eye out.

We nosed the car slowly down 4th Street, wondering if we'd go home with nothing new to report. Then my daughter's cat alarm went off again. This time, we saw a rather scruffy creature sitting on some porch steps. This house was about parallel to the one that was giving me the gut feeling. I stepped out and stood on the sidewalk, unsure what to do. "This could be it," I told her. "Well, go knock," she said. Oh, yeah. I could take some action. Meanwhile, after I called and meowed at the creature, we heard answering meows from the vicinity.

I opened the little chain-link gate and stepped into the yard. As I approached the porch, Marmalade--I think it was him, even sporting a dark scratch across his nose I didn't recognize--began hissing and growling. This wasn't reassuring. But I saw that perhaps it was the other cats to whom he was directing his vitriol. Several sleek, well-fed specimens were slinking across the calf-high grass toward the little porch from several directions at once. In that quiet, overgrown yard, it began to feel surreal, like I was in a creepy movie surrounded by feral animals. I noticed something else. There were several empty food and water dishes in front of the stairs. Did this animal not get fed? Then I knocked on the door, waited briefly, and got out of there.

Back at the car, I felt unsettled. This was a partial victory, at best. I wasn't sure how to digest it. Then my daughter pointed out that a woman was finally emerging. A small dog tripped down the walk ahead of her. I told her my story and she immediately said, "Oh, yeah, that cat's a jerk. He's just a jerk." She further said that he would "act really nice" and then turn around and attack innocent strangers who were giving him attention.

It was downhill from there. She knew who owned him, she said, and would take me there. She walked me about half a block to a place with its curtains drawn, perhaps even closer to the vibey house on the other street. I thought I heard a TV on in there. The doorbell directed me to leave a message, so I did, asking about the cat's vaccinations and leaving my phone number.

Well, that was that. It was nearly five, so I got on the phone with animal control as soon as I could to give the house number. If that cat owner allowed his animal to run around without a collar and bite people, I didn't mind handing over his address. Except animal control would not--could not--take my information. They finally got it through to me that they couldn't record anything because the health department had closed my case.

So "Mike" at the health department was next. At ten minutes to five on a Friday afternoon, I told him what I'd discovered. "So you actually laid eyes on the cat?" he said, sounding a little surprised. I told him about the ferocious behavior and the other cats. And the creepy movie feeling. He laughed. I said that Marmalade was probably just an uncut tom. "But you laid eyes on it?" Then I commented that it probably should be dead by now, if it had been one of those cases. He said yes--the disease runs its course in ten days or so. And it had been two weeks.

Now I was free, free to enjoy my little brother's visit, to plan for the future, to think about Christmas. I had done my duty in tracking down the cat, so even on the off chance I was to endure a nightmare death in the coming weeks, at least I hadn't been irresponsible. Whatever we did that Friday night would feel like a little celebration. I would die of something, but not yet, and not from that.