More so just a story and a bit of curiosity on anyone who’s experienced a cat bite. I take full responsibility for my mistake in handling this situation.

My community has a lot of feral cats. With the help of a neighbor, we trap them and take them to the humane society for fixing and vaccines. Often times I try to find the cats home and keep them in mine to socialize and give them shelter and food.

we recently trapped a young female around 5 months old. She’s been with me for about ten days and beginning to warm up to me and my resident cats.

I have a friend who wanted to take her in. So today I managed to get her in a crate and began to load her in my vehicle. Well, my crate has a small gap at the bottom and she panicked when taken outside and wedged herself into that gap.

I set the crate down and tried to grab her by the scruff. Instead I ended up with my hand on her back which pinned her down and she felt threatened. She turned around and bit me on the wrist. Just enough to get a fang to puncture my skin. I released her immediately and she ran off.

I immediately cleaned the wound with warm soapy water multiple times over first 10 mins and then applied bacitracin ointment and went straight to urgent care.

Doctors prescribed me doxycycline monohydrate (as a child my parents were told by drs that I’m allergic to penicillin, which I have not had to use since).

It’s been roughly 9 hours and I have no swelling or redness, no itching either. I have started antibiotics as of 7 pm (bite happened around 2 pm).

I know I am not in the clear and will continue to finish my course.

Lessons learned:

Use a crate that has NO GAPS.

DO NOT try to handle a feral cat with no protection.

Be extremely thorough and well thought out when moving feral kitties.

I guess I’m looking for some reassurance that I’ll be alright and to trust the antibiotics to do there job.

Anyone else use this specific antibiotic to deal with cat bite ?

TL:DR

Fixed and vaccinated feral cat bit me (my mistake) and now I’m on antibiotics.