Edit: Because I was afraid, I didn't think about going back to where I met the cat and asking the residents of the house it was in front of if it was their cat and if so if it was vaccinated. Well I finally thought about that and got to ask, and it's fine. I'm turning off inbox replies but leaving this post up for anyone else who finds themselves in this sort of scary and embarrassing situation. Thank you to everyone who gave their time to help me. You're wonderful.

So I went for a walk with my friend earlier tonight, and we saw a cat in the grass. We love cats, so I went into the grass some and beckoned to it. It walked up but kind of seemed like it couldn't walk totally straight. It wasn't physical malformed, it just seemed odd. It rubbed against me some and I started petting it, and it pretty quickly got mildly aggressive and scratched me lightly and tried to bite me. It then walked back to where it originally was in the grass. I went up to it to see if it would run away, and when I tried to reach out to see if it would let me pet it or if it was still acting odd, and it was still wanting to scratch me. This is odd to me, as usually cats are either entirely wanting to stay away from someone, or they're totally friendly. I've never encountered a cat that was willing to walk up to me, but then wanted to scratch and bite me.

I'm horribly terrified of rabies (I think I have some sort of phobia), so this cat suddenly behaving strangely has really freaked me out. I know there are not many rabies cases in the United States each year, I know this cat had a flea collar on so is likely owned by someone, and so may have been vaccinated. My mind will not let me calm down. I am terrified. I think I'm the kind of person who can't handle not knowing the risk of something horrifyingly painful or torturous. If I choose to ignore this incident because the likelihood of rabies is so small, I could be wrong and could have encountered one of the few cases in the country, and if I do nothing and am wrong, I would face a horrific, painful death because once symptoms show up, it's too late and you're pretty much guaranteed to die (it's not 100% but it's something like 97% which is basically guaranteed). I don't know how to calm down except going to the ER and consulting someone there. I have spoken with family and gone over the logic, and despite the statistically low chance of that cat having rabies and the much higher chance of it just being agitated because I'm a stranger, my mind can't get over the slim possibility that it is rabies and I'm gonna die if I don't do something about it. Please help. I don't know what else to do.