Overview

• Chloe Kelly, 44, says a stray cat bit her heel under a restaurant table at Bodrum’s La Blanche Resort on the last night of her trip.
• Back home in Exeter, her dogs Zeus and Bronson fixated on the wound, prompting an NHS 111 call that directed her to A&E.
• Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital confirmed rabies and secured urgent post-exposure vaccine and treatment flown in from Northampton.
• She was treated about 26 hours after the bite and survived, a timeline described as highly unusual and the hospital’s first known case.
• Kelly reports lasting nerve damage and the loss of her support-worker job and tied housing; she now runs a hair salon as the NHS urges immediate care after animal bites abroad.