Before my mom reads this: I’M FINE.

Last night I’m going over to R☆’s house to watch some more classic Doctor Who. I’m walking down the stairs, and there’s this woman standing next to a cat. The cat, I recognize. I used to see it all the time in my old building (two doors down). I nicknamed it Thumbs because it had extra toes. I had been friendly enough with this cat in the past to have read its tag like a year and a half ago. I think its name was Paco. Or Peso. Four letters, starting with P, ending in O. I liked Thumbs better. Anyway, I’m walking down and this woman asks me if I know the cat. Yep. Do you know whose cat it is? No, but I know it has a tag. I reach down to look at the tag. I figure the cat knows me, this’ll be fine.

WRONG.

The cat flips out, scratching and biting me. Broke the skin a few times, bit of bleeding. I run back up to my apartment to wash it off and apply some antibacterial goop. The woman is one of my neighbors, and she was attacked by the cat when she was doing laundry earlier this week. Without provocation. I mean, I was kind of asking for it, but she wasn’t. Her doctor wanted her to get a rabies shot. So now I’m freaking out, because hey, I watch the medical mystery shows.

I went to Kaiser this morning. (My copay now is $20 for appointments. Ugh. I remember when it was $5.) They look at it, wrap it up in a gigantic dressing and prescribe me some horse-pill-sized antibiotics. Oh, and give me a tetanus shot, because I’m four years overdue for a booster. They tell me to stay home the rest of the day with my arm elevated. I asked about the rabies, and the doctor said, “Maybe if we lived in Cambodia,” ie., don’t worry about it.

FUN TIMES. I need to call the Humane Society.