Yesterday, the stray cat I was fostering injured me again. It wasn’t a bite this time, because I was being cautious, but as I was leaving the room, she grabbed my leg, hard. Her claw went through my jeans, and I have a one-inch bloody scratch. I texted my adult kid and after a little back-and-forth, I put the cat in a carrier. My son-in-law came over and took her to the city shelter, where they will quarantine and observe her for ten days to see if she develops rabies, and then probably neuter her and put her back on the street.

Poor little waif. She is thin, pretty, eager to be petted, scared, and dangerous.

Meanwhile, I will be getting three more rabies shots over the next couple of weeks. I am taking an antibiotic I don’t tolerate well. I am waking up sure that I need to prepare better for death, even though prophylactic rabies treatment has a very high rate of success, and besides, she probably doesn’t have it anyway.

She was a mistake. The problem was, my previous cat before Uncle Louie, Sugar, was also a back yard rescue, and she was the best cat in the entire world. She was cheerful, affectionate, and not interested in biting. So we had hopes. But Sugar, it turned out when we took her in, had belonged to someone, and her abandonment was recent.

But even if there was any foster space in the city (there isn’t) and even if there was room in the no-kill shelters (there isn’t), I’m not going to put that very affectionate, very feral cat in any setting where she could bite someone else. The puncture wounds in my hand kept weeping for a couple of days afterwards, and I wouldn’t wish a trip to the ER for anyone. Or worse, not going to the ER and getting, if not rabies, a bacterial infection. I’m also taking an antibiotic I don’t tolerate well, and I hate taking unnecessary medications.

So I’m glad we didn’t name her. And I am especially glad I didn’t let my kid take her home where she would endanger them or my grandson. But I am terribly sad.

I try very hard to live morally with my companions. My cats don’t go outside any more. They get excellent medical care, and good nutrition. I don’t eat much meat any more, either, because it seems such a terrible waste of a sentient being to gulp down huge chunks of cow when I don’t need to.

It’s funny. I grew up in a time when animals were expendable. My mother, a microbiologist, was doing a cat dissection during graduate school, and I still remember with fascination its splayed body on a tray in her office. She raised a series of neurotic dogs that had to be disappeared (“went to live on a farm” or “at a gas station that needed a guard dog”), and she did her dissertation research on mouse stomachs. Our cats and dogs were inside and outside. We ate a heck of a lot of beef. I watched my grandmother execute one of her chickens once, for the pot. So there is a part of me, a merciless child, that will always be terribly practical when it comes to our animal companions.

And there is part of me that is not practical at all. Moral behavior is always complex, and involves weighing different kinds of harm.

I have held a number of animals while they were euthanized, because my responsibility to them was to spare them unnecessary pain at the end. And I respected my mother’s decision to stop eating at the end of her terrible ordeal with Parkinson’s, and sat with her as she died. As a result, I suffered, but the cats–and my mother–suffered less. So it was a trade-off.

One last moral action: Today, I told my massage therapist I was being treated for a cat bite, and he gratefully cancelled my appointment, even though he is at no risk whatsoever. We rescheduled for next month. I would have hated keeping the truth from him. But hell, I could really use a massage right now.

Poor little waif. I hope she will be okay. I hope she doesn’t turn out to have rabies. I hope they spay and release her to make her way in the city. And I sure hope I am healthy, too. But at least she won’t bite anyone else.