I feel compelled after all of my drama yesterday, to close this out: Pain in hand subsided nicely between 8 and 10 last night so I could sleep, and now I can barely feel it. I still have the red blotch and that weird sweat around it (hmmm). Sometimes I wonder if it is some (yet another) strange invasive species that got me? Anyway, the plan going forward is to wear gloves, and keep the gloves in a zip lock when not in use. We will see if I follow through on all of that, ha. In the end, I am just glad it was me that got it. I would have suffered way more if it were my granddaughter. While I'm here, a cat update, if anyone wondered...cat did indeed return the next night as BW had said. But before my wife could feed it, it snatched a lizard, took off, and was not seen again, haha. There are plenty of lizards around here, and who knows, maybe they are tasty? That was 2 nights ago, and no sighting last night, so maybe it is doing fine on its own.