Today is World Rabies Day. On this day veterinarians and public health officials exhort the public to remain vigilant of this killer virus, one still endemic to U.S. wildlife and a threat to most of the world's mammalian populations.

For my part, I could think of no better way to get your attention than to relate my own gruesome tale:

Several years ago a father and his young son brought me a black kitten they'd found in their yard days before. Though initially vigorous and healthy, she'd begun to twitch her head ominously over the past 24 hours. What's more, she now growled and hissed without provocation.

I asked all the questions veterinarians are trained to ask in these instances, including the most critical one: Did she bite anyone?

''No,'' came the ready reply. But I had reason to doubt. Gently, I asked the son if the marks on his hands were the result of her claws or her teeth. He claimed she'd scratched him with her teeth but insisted they weren't ``bites.''

As all veterinarians are instructed to do in cases where rabies is a possibility, I called the local health department. After listening to my description of the situation the authorities recommended immediate brain tissue analysis for the kitten, as in, euthanasia now.

The kitten's family quickly agreed and the child was dispatched to a nearby emergency room.

Meanwhile, I was left with the grim task of administering an overdose of several medications, removing the kitten's head and braving traffic to deliver it to the lab.

Within several hours the lab concluded the kitten did not carry rabies. All that barbaric work for nothing, you may think. But what if she had had rabies? Then everyone involved would have received a series of post-exposure vaccines (myself included, despite all the pre-exposure rabies vaccinations I've already suffered).

Though rabies is rigidly controlled in the United States, it's responsible for the death of two or three Americans every year -- most of whom are unaware they've been exposed.

Worldwide, this viral infection accounts for 55,000 deaths every year, all of which are 100 percent preventable. It's reported that one person dies of rabies every 10 minutes, most of them in Asia and Africa.

Yet closer to home, it's clear that more work needs to be done. Though more than 90 percent of rabies in the United States is found in wildlife species, dogs and cats are high-risk vectors whose domestic proximity to humans makes them ideal transmitters.

That's why vaccinating our pets regularly (every one to three years) provides a huge epidemiological barrier against the spread of this disease to humans. But it's not enough. Though Miami-Dade has been largely spared over the past 20 years (last year's case of a man bitten by a rabid bat notwithstanding), cases in Broward and Palm Beach counties are on the rise. So what's a community to do?

In a fiscal climate where budget cuts loom over all ''nonessential'' services, individual sacrifices are sometimes required to support a sagging state of affairs. License fees for pets help fund our animal shelters, provide the community with low-cost population control services and make rabies vaccines widely available. Yet only an estimated 30 percent of our area's pet dogs are licensed. Presumably, a far smaller percentage of our total canine and feline population is vaccinated.

Licensing and vaccination is a small sacrifice for pet owners (approximately $3 to $40 a year in low-cost settings). How much more could our community accomplish in terms of rabies safety and humanitarian aid to needy animals if more of us obeyed the law?

And then there's our ability to simply pay attention. We need to be aware of how the pets, feral cats and wildlife in our neighborhoods behave. Because rabies makes animals act erratically, the first sight of abnormal behavior should trigger a call to your county's animal services for assistance.

Should a bite occur, regardless of the offending species, it must be reported to your physician immediately. Not all rabid animals will display the same symptoms (or any) so even bites from seemingly healthy, unvaccinated animals fall under this advisory.

Finally, discuss animal bites with your children and make them aware of the risks they run with secrecy.

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