When I was a little kid, my dad was driving through a construction zone and there was a cat stuck between the cars and the barrier (so no hope of getting off the road) and weaving around desperately trying not to get hit by traffic. After being overcome by a fit of what my partner calls, "daughter's make you soft", my dad pulls over to try to save this cat because he's relatively certain this cat is going to die and is upset at seeing it panic. He opens the car, and after some coaxing, manages to get the cat inside, but that was when all hell breaks loose... It flies around yowling and scratching and absolutely losing its mind. My dad gets torn to shreds in the process--bruises, deep gashes in his arms and face, bite marks, etc. By this point, my dad is pretty pissed and is starting to care quite a bit less about whether or not the cat dies... I'm not sure the exact timeline from this point, but basically he tries to take the cat to a shelter and get himself to urgent care and the shelter won't take the cat (both because it's aggressive and because it's bit him) and the urgent care says he has to keep the cat until his rabies test comes back.

I was maybe 7 at the time, so my dad was naturally the toughest person I knew, so when he came home looking like he just went 5 rounds with Floyd Mayweather, I was naturally terrified of the demon cat. My aunt, consummate animal lover, was called, and even though she could not get the cat to come around, she did bring over a giant cage (she had malamutes) so the cat could live in our garage for awhile. My mom would take out paper plates of spam and cat food and tuna a couple times a day to put through the slats of the cage, but I'd lock the door behind her because I'd be so scared.

Long story short, dad did not get rabies, recovered from his injuries, rescues refused to take the VERY feral cat, and dad found a very large bit of woods far from any roads to release the cat in for the remainder of it's days. Hopefully it's good now. I do not think it would have ever been happy in a home. It didn't even like cat food.

OP, you did what you could, but cats are naturally pretty wild and if they've never been handled by a human before, being on the streets may feel more like home even if it's hard for us to see them cold or hungry. All we can do is do what we can to support them. I hope you can get those wounds treated soon!