I saw an article in passing about a rabid cat, but I can’t find the article now. I never thought cats could get rabies. Is this true? Do they get routine rabies shots like dogs do? Or, I WAG, is it a matter of “getting rabies” vs. “carrying rabies”? - Jinx
AFAIK, all mammals can carry rabies. It’s rarer in cats, though. [url=http://www.co.cowlitz.wa.us/health/temp/first_reported_cat_rabies_case_i.htm]Cat rabies news article.
Cats are indeed required to get routine rabies vaccinations. The incidence of rabies in any domestic animal (in the U.S., anyway) is very low, but it still occurs. This page has some statistics about rabies cases in New York State, and this CDC page has information about vaccination strategies.
I didn’t find anything that specifically said so, but looking at the statistics, it looks like any mammal can get rabies.
Well, fine, Q.E.D., but my links were right the first time! 
There have been recent incidents of rabid cats at Kennesaw College in Georgia. See here for a letter from the campus paper.
Jinx, please forgive my transgression into offtopic regions.
Any mammal can carry rabies. I know the following does not belong in GQ. :insert apathy emoticon here:
[anecdote (skip to bold)]
In downtown Memphis, we once captured a live raccoon in our backyard. My cousin and I were around 10 years old, and we built a simple box trap after spotting the animal in a tree in the backyard. It was the kind of trap where the prey would enter the trap and trigger a simple mechanism to drop the door behind him. We were unsuccessful in this attempt, and employed the help of my father. After a scant minute of evaluation, he ended up grabbing the raccoon in a towel, racing inside the house and dropping it in the bathtub. My cuz and I were flabbergasted, and we enjoyed every second of this crazy scene.
We soon realized that the coon was friendly, docile and inquisitive; we named him Keno. We determined that he had to have been someone’s pet prior to our “capture” of him. The assholes probably just kicked him out of the house in downtown Memphis.
Keno was a great pet. His favorite thing to do was fish out big red grapes from a milk jug. The grapes had to be forced into the jug, so Keno would put his hand in there, grab a grape, and then his fist wouldn’t fit back out of the jug…
But I digress.
[/anecdote]
Damn, I’m sorry about that… I told you that story to tell you this one:
The vet told us that raccoons “cannot produce saliva, which is why they ‘wash their food’. Ergo, no saliva equals impervious to rabies”.
I was later scorned and ridiculed for citing my former veterinarian’s tripe.
End result: Any mammal can carry rabies.
It’s already been answered, but another anecdote:
Locally (well, within about 50 miles), there was a case of a rabid cat that appeared near a school, which required about a dozen people to undergo the rabies vaccination series because they were exposed to it.
[hijack]If you’re gonna hijack, skip the apologies! Specially when it’s an interesting hijack! [/hijack] 
Sure, cats can carry rabies. Just last summer there was a vaccinated cat that had rabies a few counties over. We were still getting all sorts of newsletters and stuff from the CDC about it 8 months later.
Most areas require all dogs, cats, and horses over a certain age (6 months for dog and cats, I’m not sure about horses) to be vaccinated regularly, in accordance with the AVMA’s guidelines. Of course, there are lots and lots of folks who don’t bother to obey the law.
My vet, Dr. Richard Chaille, says he asks first if the cat is strictly indoors before giving a yearly rabies vaccination to a cat. The indoor cats get every-two-years shots, because they’re unlikely to eat any critters with rabies. The reason for his caution is that, in a small number of cases, the shot is harmful to the cat. Details? Ask your own vet.
Outdoor cats, he says, should get a shot yearly. Cats are hunters, and there’s a chance they’ll kill a rabid mousie or bat, or meet a rabid feral cat in a territorial discussion.
I asked him how a cat could catch a bat. He’s known of some cats that climb outbuildings (one even routinely climbed a light pole,) where they leap out at the bats working the bugs around a light. Yike! Those are clearly Mountain Dew cats.
You better believe that cats can contract and transmit rabies. Barn and farm cats are especially prone to the disease because they roam and will attack just about anything that is smaller than they are, including sick and grounded bats.
A friend was attacked by a barn cat a few years ago. It proved to be rabid. She had to go through the shot series (which is now in the hip, not directly onto the stomach with a long, long needle. It was no fun. He husband organized a major cat hunt to clean out the resident population. It was a cruel thing to do but under the circumstances the only safe and responsible thing to do.
I have also seen horses lost to rabies.