Grandmother Attacked by Rabid Bobcat, Strangles It with Bare Hands
Parents will do just about anything to protect their children. Grandparents will, too.
For DeDe Phillips of Georgia, that meant not uttering a sound even when she was being mauled by a rabid wildcat.
Phillips had just gotten a fun new bumper sticker for her car and wanted to take a photo of it, so she went outside with her phone to snap a pic.
When she got outside, she saw a lanky cat standing next to the car. It was just staring at her.
Phillips was surprised — she hadn’t seen a bobcat in the area before, and had never even heard of anyone else seeing one around.
As soon as the animal moved toward her, she went into fight mode. “My first thought was ‘not today,'” she said. “I wasn’t dying today.”
“As soon as it took the first step, I was in trouble and I knew it,” Phillips said. “When it got to [the] pole, it leaped on me.”
“I grabbed it by the shoulders and pushed it back away from me…and I took it down,” she said.
She was terrified that her granddaughter who was sleeping in the house would hear the commotion and come outside. If the cat saw her, she had no doubt it would attack her granddaughter, too.
So she stayed silent, even when the cat chomped down on her fingers, breaking bones. She worked her hands around the creature’s neck and squeezed.
“If I had ever let it go, it would have been me, so I made sure I never let it go,” Phillips said.
Even as she suffocated the cat, it fought her. It gashed her with its claws, leaving wounds all over her body.
Once the bobcat stopped moving, she yelled for help. Her son came and stabbed the cat before Phillips let go just to make absolutely sure that it was dead.
Eventually, it was determined that the bobcat had been rabid. Not only did Phillips have to deal with the many lacerations she had received, she also had to get shots to protect her from the deadly disease.
The rounds of shots she’d need for rabies were expensive: $10,000 each. And she’d need 10 of them.
A fundraiser has been set up for the brave grandma, and nearly $30,000 has been raised. Phillips doesn’t have insurance, so those funds will be put toward the medical bills she’s accrued.
Hopefully she’ll make a quick recovery and the series of shots will be effective — but she made it clear she’s not your average grandma, and she’s willing to do what she must to protect the ones she loves.
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