Its 3:30 in the morning. I have woken to my cat foaming at the mouth, something she started doing on an off about thirty-six hours ago. I can’t be sure it is rabies. The foaming at the mouth is the only thing I know about it, but the doctor tells me that if it is she’ll be dead within the week and if so then I need to come in to Niamey. In Niger I seem to be making up for the rarity of medical issues I had in Guinea.
Rabies has a sort of almost mythical status, perhaps most due to the movie “28 Days Later,” but also various other scenes from our media. I imagine that I will walk into the house one day to find my tiny kitten transformed into a quivering beast of rage, that she will snarl at me and then lunge for my throat. Reality is likely to be less dramatic, but still worrisome, since I have been in contact with her saliva and have been scratched.
Yet now she is happily busy playing with a piece of string. Is this sort of weird occassional frothing at the mouth rabies, or (as I first thought) some reaction to a poisonous toad or spider? It isn’t likely to be a poison at this point because it is reoccurring rather than diminishing over time. I don’t know enough and I don’t have access to information. It is unnerving to have to trust completely to a doctor, as they must have had to do before the days of internet.
It is a bit of a macabre scene, at 3:33 AM, sitting on my woven cot with my headlight on, watching my cat as I type, and wondering if I will soon find myself in the medical unit in Niamey getting rabies shots. I recall rumors of a window in which shots need to be received in order for them to be effective. Surely it isn’t forty-eight hours? It must not be, or the doctor would have been more concerned when I spoke to him on the phone. There, now she is drinking water, and my mom told me to watch out for her avoiding water, so maybe there is nothing to worry about after all. This cycle of doubt and surety about her affliction leaves me waiting, knowing that something rather disturbing could be taking place, but not yet reacting on that level because I don’t know for sure. I wonder how many tragedies end still suspended in that sort of doubt?
Here is a picture of her foaming mouth, though by the time I post it the outcome will be known. She doesn’t seem to be otherwise much affected, aside from sometimes rubbing her jaw on the floor as if it itches or is numb, or maybe she just doesn’t like the feeling of the sticky foam clinging to her fur. There was no animal that I know of that could have bitten her, though I also hear (through the internet via my mom) that it can take 10-14 days to manifest, which would have been before I actually got her.
It is a powerless situation, filled with interminable waiting and an impatience to get it over with, one way or the other. And it ties in rather nicely with my see-sawing feelings about my service at this point, one year in, and whether I can engage effectively in my community in Niger or whether my time is better spent in other pursuits. That see-saw of doubt about my service has always been with me, though the reasons have changed along the way.
Anyway, we should know by my birthday.
