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Message: <blockquote data-quote="seebs" data-source="post: 6474791" data-attributes="member: 61529">Yes, although it's quite rare. Happened to open an artery in someone already sort of old and not in great health, the one time I remember details of. And the scratches often get infected and that can kill, but not quickly.For a more practical example: A friend of ours with no experience with cats once tried to help me pill a cat. Unfortunately, he was a dog person, so he did what you'd do to helplessify a dog, which is put the cat on its back.It made enough holes in him that we ran out of bandages and band-aids and things, so he had to go to the veteran's affairs hospital covered with Hello Kitty band-aids. He ended up being hospitalized, because he ended up with an antibiotic-resistant infection.Total time to do that much damage: Roughly one, maybe two, seconds.Oh, and at the same time it managed to get its teeth to meet inside my thumb, and I couldn't use my left hand competently for weeks.And that's one cat, not in great health, against two people, one of them an actual armed forces vet who was in pretty good shape at the time.See, house cats don't fight people normally, because that's stupid and they know better. They will not actually fight a human unless they think they are dead and they are trying to make sure they buy the other cats time, or maybe there's kittens involved. Otherwise? They are not going to actually fight you. They are going to try to make you not think they are worth the trouble to kill and eat. But when they are actually fighting? They are blindingly fast, and they are some of the more efficient predators out there, and they are machines *designed* for shredding things made out of meat. We are made out of meat.</blockquote>

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