She got bitten by a cat. Turns out this is a highly contentious topic!

Until yesterday, we described this cat that we're looking after as merely antisocial.

But yesterday it bit my wife on the hand. She was stroking its back as she'd done a few times — when the thing would let her come close enough to touch. It seemed like the cat/woman friendship was coming along nicely.

Until it bit her.

By way of background, we're house sitting for a couple in Wollongong, just south of Sydney. We've housesat here 4 or 5 times before, and slowly this antisocial cat has warmed to us.

Or so we thought.

So what to do when you get a cat bite?

• Wash the wound thoroughly.
• Pam had some hydrogen peroxide so a few drops of that.
• We also have tea tree oil with us (it's an excellent antiseptic) so we used that.
• I also have colloidal silver with me. It's a great antibacterial + antimicrobial, so we poured some of that onto the wound. (Later we dampened a cotton wool ball with it and taped that over the wound.)

Once the immediate first aid was done, the scary thoughts came. This cat spends many hours every day in the Australian bush near the house. What if it's got some weird disease or is carrying something really bad?

So Pam hit Google and looked up cat bites. That's a scary thing to do, all on its own.

I visited my favorite natural health group in Facebook and that's where the "highly contentious" bit comes in.

Well, not contentious as in people arguing. But contentious in the sense of a wide range of totally different responses. Poles apart. All the way from "take this very seriously" to "what's all the fuss about?" (paraphrasing here, okay).

Here are some of the scarier responses.

• "I ended up in hospital for 2 weeks on IV antibiotics and pleural effusions after being bitten by my own cat."

• "Cat bites get infected very quickly. I work in an animal shelter and its common for people to get severe infections in a very short time. We have staff that have been in hospital for days or requiring daily visits for days. "

• "Look up cat scratch fever....I had a patient with this...it was her cat, an inside cat at that. Watch for the signs. She [w]ound up on life support before it was all over."

• "I’m a vet tech and have been bitten many times. I always try to open up the bite as much as possible and scrub scrub scrub, make it bleed, and use peroxide copiously. If it is deep or near a joint you need to see a doctor immediately as cat bites can turn nasty really quick."

What I didn't know, but learned from the FB group discussion, was about bentonite clay. You can use it to make a paste that will draw out the bacteria and poisons in the wound.

Guess what? Bentonite clay is now on my shopping list.

Takeaway

Your next cat bit might turn out to be a "nothing" (which seems to be our case - the hand is fine next day, skin is smooth, no temperature, no red lines, no aching - thankfully).

Or it could become very serious. I wanted to alert you to that possibility, and to give you what seems to be the best natural health advice:

"Wash it out with colloidal silver and then make a paste with bentonite clay & apply it to the wound.. It will draw all of the bacteria & junk out. Once it dries, wash it off and folllow up with colloidal silver until it heals."

Question (it's your turn now!)

What's been your experience of cat bites?

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