Did you know cat scratch fever was a thing?

So, now that I am going to "officially" blog, I am definitely going to go back and write blogs about what happened before this, but this has just felt like the icing on the cake lately, and it should be a PSA. SO.. I have an orange cat and two jack russells (plus an abundance of farm animals but we will get to that later). Pippin (the cat) is an indoor cat, but every time we take the dogs out has a curiosity that must be fulfilled. He fulfilled this curiosity.

Over a month ago, my husband was in the hospital and I was home with our daughter and the animals. I had just put our daughter down for a nap and took the dogs out to use the potty. When I brought them in, I heard a strange noise coming from the duck area of our little farm and had the door open for too long so Pippin took this opportunity to make his great escape. I panicked. My husband wasn't home to assist and I was afraid Pippin would get away so I hung onto him to bring him back. As I hung onto him, he proceeded to bite and scratch me, and as soon as we got in the door and I put him down he was loving up on me and purring. I didn't have any time for that though... my hands were dripping blood all over my pretty floors. 

I immediately went to the sink and ran cold water but that did not stop anything so I had to make my way to the bathroom, leaving a crime scene of blood behind me. When I finally slowed the blood loss and came out of shock- then I started crying and realized I'd been shaking the whole time. I got hydrogen peroxide on all of the wounds, cleaned up the blood, and called my husband. 

For the duration of my husband's hospital stay, someone had to come over to help me with the farm animals and I had to sleep with icepacks on my hands. I tried to give the wounds a few days to clear up, which they did not and I ended up having to go to my doctor where I was diagnosed with Cat Scratch Fever. I had to have two shots of antibiotics that day and go back the next day for two more shots of antibiotics, then take it in pill form. I then got a call about 6 days later that one of the wounds required a different antibiotic, so I had to start taking that one. My wounds are now all cleared up, I just have some mad scars that I'm trying to heal quickly with Vitamin E as my doctor said untreated they could take about a year to heal. The moral of the story is, if your animal gets out- don't panic, grab some food and shake it and they will probably come running. Or, if it unfortunately does happen to you go to the doctor immediately.