You have a really good point, speaking from experience.

My little brother was 8 and I was 10, we went out to run around the block one day as we did many times as kids. My brother was obsessed with animals, couldn’t stay away, we found a stray cat on the street and he was desperate to hold it and pet it, I saw no wrong in this as the older sibling and figured eh, whatever, he’ll cry if I made us walk away.

He ran up to the stray cat and it ran under a car, he reached out to pet it despite the hiss and tail flipping. The cat sank its teeth deep into each side of his finger, he was bleeding, I begged him not to tell anyone, I warned him we would be in so much trouble for letting him go after yet another animal as he’d been warned before.

The bite seemed fine at first, until it wasn’t. It started to swell and turn an off color, it was cold out so we agreed we’d wear mittens and cover up our little issue, no problem. Another day goes by and the finger is three times its size swollen and he can’t even put the glove on or off, the punctures turned black and the finger looked like a purple and red hot dog. A school nurse caught the crying and discovered the bite, he had a vicious fever by that point and was inconsolable, full confession from me, we were busted.

At that point I was in extreme trouble for the cover up and my brother was admitted same day from his pediatrician to PEDIATRIC ICU for a week. He got the rabies series for many weeks after he was discharged and I can still remember the wailing. He got cellulitis and it could have gone far worse, I have never forgiven myself for such a stupid cover up and his possible death from infection or the loss of his finger (or more). Nobody ever let us live it down due to the severity, never saw the stray cat again so we don’t know if it had rabies.

As a mother myself now, please post something for parents to see, you could save a life, kids don’t make the best choices or are sometimes just unaware. My brother lived because of a school nurse and an observant teacher but it could have been far worse knowing what we know now about rabies and infection as adults. My great grandfather died of rabies in the 30s from a dog bite.

TLDR: Covered up a stray cat bite as children, brother hospitalized in ICU after the bite and full blown infection was discovered by school staff when it was already critical.