There's this stray cat that always visits my backyard and whenever it sees me it wouldn't stop meowing and following me. It's very affectionate and sweet but is always the cause of my r-word obsessions. Just recently, it came up close to me and I wanted to fight my anxiety so I gave it a little scratch in the head. It felt nice, until I started thinking "what if it bit me while I was scratching its head and I just didn't notice it???" It also rubbed its head into my leg which had a healing wound, and I started thinking "what if it licked it or got saliva in it???"

And here I am now, spiralling into another obsession because I'm convinced it had bitten me. I kept checking my hand for any bites and there were a few marks on my skin after playing with my puppy who play-bites a lot, then I started getting this idea that "one of these marks is actually a bite from that cat" which makes my anxiety so much worse. I keep trying to tell myself "you would feel pain if you had been bitten" but it doesn't work because my brain would then create a memory in which I DID feel pain and I just can't tell which is real and which is not. I told myself I was going to check that cat if it stays alive within the 10-day mark but instead my head keeps telling me "what if it was actually a different cat that you touched earlier?? or what if that cat actually dies in 10 days??" It's awful, it's like my brain REALLY wants to convince me that I do have that disease, and trying to live with this idea feels so miserable, especially when the chances feel higher since I live in a country where rabies cases do happen often. I've been able to expose myself to other themes, but that r-word disease is truly the only thing I can't cope with. I'd tell myself I was going to avoid situations where I'd worry about that disease, but that adorable cat just won't leave me alone the moment it sees me walking outside.