Bleeding Heart

Trinket is definitely not herself.

She seems distracted. Preoccupied. Even a little squirrelly.

And she has open, oozing, bleeding wounds all over her neck and face.

Before I do anything, I go back to the rabies website to see just what things I can NOT catch rabies from. It doesn't specifically mention open, oozing, bleeding wounds, but it does say other comforting things about what I'd be exposed to if I got near Trinket's open, oozing, bleeding wounds and that I can not catch it from those (very disgusting) things. So I don't have to resort to throwing Trinket out the door and running away myself if she doesn't. Just yet.

I do what any mother would do.  I put Neosporin in the the open, oozing, bleeding wounds with a Q-tip.  And then I talk to her in as soothing a voice as I can muster under the circumstances (the circumstances being that I am freaking out) and try to pet and scratch her lightly on the parts that have not sprung a leak yet. And I breathe into a paperbag until morning. Scott will be here early. He'll know what to do.

But apparently, Scott, though he's had many animals of many kinds, he's never had one catch a bat, never had a rabies scare, and most definitely has not had an animal appear to have developed leprosy. He's sympathetic but baffled. And he convinces me that the wounds are the same wounds she's had, that they are healing, and like any scab, they itch. And since when we scratched at scratches on healing scraped elbows and knees when we fell off swings and pogo sticks (me) and skateboards, and mopeds and unicycles (Scott) as children, our mothers told us not to scratch, we usually didn't look like lepers. But Trinket, he reminds me, has a brain the size of a ball bearing, and does not know not to scratch herself to shreds.

I am convinced.

Only temporarily.

Later that night, as Trinket sits on the radiator cover for warmth after the keyboard of my laptop  where she had been sitting had cooled, she begins to scratch. And there, before my wondering eyes, she scratch-scratch-scratches a new and different spot on her neck, and as I get closer, I can see that she has left a new open, oozing, and freshly bleeding wound the size of a nickel!