For the Kipling stories:
Tabaqui doesn't really have rabies.
He's one of the least-formidable carnivores in the jungle, and he hangs around with animals much stronger and more aggressively-predatory than himself. The only way he can ensure that none of them try to bully, kill, or eat him is to fake being rabid so they won't risk infection.- Very likely considering that if he was truly rabid, he wouldn´t have been alive by the time Mowgli is a teenager.
