I was talking to a friend about cat bites yesterday. He said one of his friends was bitten in the leg by their house cat. It got horribly infected, his leg swelled to three times its normal size, he became violently ill (high fever, vomiting, headaches, the works) and ended up being hospitilized for several days until they got everything under control. Yikes!
I'm sorry you had such a rough day... But like the doc said, better safe than sorry...
It stinks when you do something nice and then it comes back to (literally!) bite you!