Whether a cat has rabies virus on its paws depends mainly on whether the cat carries it. If the cat carries it, the rabies virus is usually carried on the saliva as well, and the cat can get some saliva on its paws when it licks its paws. Therefore, the paws can also carry rabies virus as a result. It is not the case that a cat’s paws can carry rabies virus without licking. A cat’s claws scratching a person should also be treated in the same way as a cat bite. After a cat scratches a person, the saliva that contacts the wound is generally dry, the rabies virus is less resistant to the external environment, and the rabies virus inside the dry saliva is likely to have been inactivated, so the scratch is less exposed to saliva on the wound than the bite. Such a scratch also has slightly less chance of rabies virus infection, but because there is no sure way to test how much rabies virus is on the wound, the measures to deal with it are the same.