PERRY TOWNSHIP — Pennsylvania’s piecemeal system for animal control left a Berks County family scrambling for answers and assistance when they were attacked by a cat who later tested positive for rabies, a virus that is almost always fatal once symptoms begin.
The state divides responsibility among different agencies. The Pennsylvania Game Commission will assist when wildlife is involved, but not domestic animals or pets. The state Department of Agriculture can offer advice about those animals, but won’t seize, euthanize, or test them.
Some municipalities offer animal control services that handle rabies cases, but there’s no requirement for them to do so, and many in Berks County don’t. That absence, plus a lack of countywide guidance, leaves some residents to fend for themselves while trying to make urgent, often costly decisions.
In early September, a group of residents in Perry Township learned how difficult it can be to get help after a neighborhood cat — later confirmed to have rabies — bit three people.
Seeking help
Charlie Miller and Kameron Biehl moved to Perry Township in July. They live in an RV near Biehl’s parents, Kraig and Janet. The Biehls have always had cats as pets.
Miller, who at the time was about to start an internship at Red Creek Wildlife Center and now works for Humane Pennsylvania, was helping Janet find resources to spay two semi-feral cats living near a shed outside of the Biehls’ house.
She noticed that one of the cats was behaving strangely: vocal, disoriented, and refusing to eat. Miller didn’t know the behavior was a sign of rabies.
“She wasn't foaming at the mouth, like everything I pictured rabies to look like,” Miller said of the cat named Callie. “She was adorable, and she was chatty, and I guess that's a symptom too, but I didn't know.”
When Miller tried to move Callie out of the road, the cat lunged and bit her. The cat later bit Kraig Biehl when he approached her.
“She got within about two feet and went ballistic,” he said. “She just went nuts.”
At urgent care, Biehl was treated with rabies immunoglobulin, which is used with the vaccine to prevent infection (he says he was not given that necessary vaccine shot). Miller was uninsured and wanted to confirm whether the cat was rabid before starting a costly treatment. When the patients asked for advice, they say clinic staff told them they had a couple of days to make a decision.
When Biehl went to warn others about Callie, he found out the cat had already bitten a neighbor.
Miller wanted to trap and quarantine Callie. Biehl opted to shoot the cat to prevent anyone else from being injured. “My philosophy is three strikes, you're out,” Biehl said. “I had to kill a cat, all right, and then figure out what we're going to do.”
They said they spent much of a Saturday trying to find someone who could test the cat. Instead, they kept getting shuffled around between different agencies. Now that Callie was dead, they were worried the body would decompose to a point that wasn’t viable for testing, so they felt they did not have much time.
They called the State Police troop that oversees the township and were told to call the Pennsylvania Game Commission, which separately referred them to the state Department of Health. Meanwhile, Janet Biehl called two local veterinarians, both of whom said they couldn’t help, either due to lack of staff or because they weren’t previously clients.
“We just felt helpless in the beginning, because we didn't know what we were doing,” Kraig Biehl said. “We knew the possibility of rabies, but we're not familiar with rabies at all.”
Eventually, the Biehls were able to get in touch with a health worker and a community health nurse at a regional Department of Health office.
The worker said a Department of Health lab in Exton could test for rabies, but could only accept a head. A spokesperson for the agency told Spotlight PA that staff recommended the Biehls contact a local veterinarian to euthanize the animal, prepare it for testing, and send the specimen to the lab.
Kraig decided he would have to do it himself with the help of a friend.
“I'm really not interested in cutting the cat's head off, right?” Biehl said. “However, at that point, you do what you got to do.”
Costly gaps
For the Biehl family, one of the biggest challenges was that their municipality — Perry Township — does not contract with a company, or employ staff, specifically for animal control services.
Neither does Berks County, which also does not have “specific rabies response staffing,” according to Kimberly Fies, director of agriculture.
“I would believe that, if there is some significant outbreak, we could coordinate with the [county] Department of Emergency Services to get some notification out to the municipality,” Fies told Spotlight PA.
A county spokesperson said its role is limited to making referrals to the Game Commission, the local Animal Rescue League (ARL), or the Humane Society, “barring an emergency situation or an outbreak.”
>> READ MORE: What Berks County residents need to know if they encounter a rabid animal
Six Berks County municipalities pay ARL for animal control services and rabies response: Bern Township, Jefferson Township, New Morgan Borough, Reading, Upper Bern Township, and Wyomissing Borough.
Ashley Mikulsky, chief executive officer of ARL, said the nonprofit has also responded to rabies cases outside those areas when alerted by residents. All involved cats.
Residents outside the coverage area can call ARL to rent out traps and get guidance on best practices for trapping an animal, but they do not have staff readily available to go out to places that do not have local animal control services. ARL can help with testing, at their discretion and at a cost: $100 for the euthanasia ($150 if the animal weighs over 20 pounds) and $250 for specimen prep and testing.
While ARL fills the gap when it can, Mikulsky said the system ultimately leaves residents — and her staff — carrying costs that should fall on local governments.
“You cannot rely on a nonprofit to be the unpaid public health and safety for animal control. That's crazy,” Mikulsky said. “If you have a contractual relationship with them, sure. But that's what I think we've arrived at in Berks County, is many of these municipalities either don't want to or cannot pay for full-service animal control.”
In many cases, local police departments will dispatch officers to put down potentially rabid animals, but Mikulsky said relying on officers is not a solution for communities that lack local animal control services. Officers often lack the equipment to handle rabid animals and are not aware of the steps that need to happen after an animal is killed, she said.
A lack of resources
The problem is not unique to Berks County. Many Pennsylvania municipalities lack the funding necessary to have an animal control officer on staff, according to Aliza Simeone, assistant professor of clinical infectious diseases and biosecurity at the University of Pennsylvania’s PennVet.
“In many counties in Pennsylvania, they don't have the same services down to a local level, so they don't have somebody you can call to come out and get that animal, whereas they do in some of our more populated areas, like in Philadelphia,” said Simeone, who is also a former veterinary medical field officer for the state Department of Agriculture.
In some cases, municipal employees may not be qualified to provide guidance if a resident calls for help. When Kraig Biehl called Perry Township to report the case, he was told to contact the Game Commission, even though that agency does not handle feral cats.
“They dropped me like a hot rock,” Biehl said. “All I want to do is inform.”
When Spotlight PA visited the Perry Township municipal building, an employee directed the reporter to contact the Game Commission and declined to comment further.
The challenges deepen when the animal in question is not a pet, but a feral cat — a category that sits in a gray area of responsibility. A spokesperson for the Game Commission said “stray and feral cats are not considered wildlife, and do not fall under our general jurisdiction.” If a pet has been exposed to a potentially rabid wild animal, and that animal is still in the vicinity, the agency will send a game warden to locate and put down the suspect animal and have it tested for rabies.
The Department of Agriculture can issue quarantine orders and give guidance for pets exposed to rabies, but it does not have field staff who can trap and euthanize an animal showing signs of the disease. Spokesperson Shannon Powers said the agency “does not capture feral cats for any purpose.” In instances in which there is no local animal control, the department advises residents to report the suspected rabid animal to local law enforcement.
Berks County had 10 confirmed rabies infections in animals in 2023, 11 in 2024, and 17 so far in 2025. Of this year’s total, four were cats.
In 2023, Pennsylvania ranked fourth among U.S. states for confirmed animal rabies cases. Simeone said Pennsylvania reports high numbers of cases, in part, because the state has more labs that can test for rabies.
“It’s just a fact of life in Pennsylvania, because we have raccoon strain rabies here, and have for several decades now, so that particular virus does a better job of getting into other animals,” Simeone said.
Neil Ruhland, a Department of Health spokesperson, said rabies cases in animals are “normal yearly occurrences” and that there is “nothing abnormal about current levels.” Powers echoed that, saying “the level of reported cases of animals confirmed to have rabies is not sufficient to warrant alarm or widespread new measures, beyond those already in place.”
Miller was treated with the rabies vaccine and immunoglobulin after Callie tested positive. Since Miller does not have health insurance, the initial hospital bill was $21,000.
The Penn State hospital forgave about $15,000 of the bill after Miller provided financial information, and she’s in the process of negotiating a lower bill and setting up a payment plan.
The Department of Health does not have assistance programs to help pay for rabies treatment, Ruhland said. Some rabies vaccine manufacturers offer assistance for uninsured patients, he added.
“I just wish there was one phone call that would have made it a smoother day, to tell us what to do next, or where to take the cat,” Miller said. “It took hours to figure out where to take the cat, and the only option was an hour away and behead it yourself. I didn't feel like that should be the only way.”