Kitten Vaccinations
Getting your cat or kitten vaccinated is cheap, easy and straightforward. Not getting your cat or kitten vaccinated will leave them open to serious, debilitating, painful and fatal diseases. Here’s a quick guide to what’s involved.
The treatment
The process of vaccination is itself simple. A newborn kitten gets her first set of injections at 9 weeks old, then another set at 12 weeks old.
An older cat that hasn’t been vaccinated will get two sets, three weeks apart.
Depending on factors such as likelihood of contact with other cats and who you listen to, your cat will be fully protected either one week or two weeks later.
No other initial treatment is necessary, but annual boosters are usually administered. Veterinary experts aren’t entirely sure if yearly top-ups are necessary, but most pet insurance companies will insist on them.
The diseases
Cat Flu (aka Feline Upper Respiratory Disease Complex)
Strictly speaking cat flu is one of a range of viral infections. By far the two most common are feline rhinotracheitis and feline calicivirus. The vaccinations will protect against these two feline diseases.
The symptoms vary slightly, but will include most of the following: sneezing, coughing, runny nose, drooling, loss of appetite, fever, depression, eye ulcers, mouth ulcers, joint pain and gunky eyes.
A cat with cat flu is in severe danger from dehydration in the short term, and may also develop pneumonia. In the case of calicivirus especially, the disease never really goes away. Rhinotracheitis will re-appear when it’s least welcome i.e. at times of stress. Reproduction in female cats may also be impossible.
Feline Infectious Enteritis (aka Panleukopania)
Another virus that causes severe problems for cats. It is widespread, partly because it is so hard to kill. It can also survive for over a year without getting anywhere near a cat.
The symptoms are vomiting, diarrhoea, fever, seizures, depression, thirst and crippling abdominal pain. It attacks the digestive system, lymphatic system, nervous system and bone marrow.
Feline infectious enteritis can kill within five days. Kittens that get the disease rarely survive, and cats that do get through it suffer for the rest of their lives.
Their intestines will be permanently damaged, they will suffer diarrhoea, and any females who fall pregnant will give birth to either stillborn or brain damaged kittens.
Feline Leukemia Virus (FeLV)
Again, caused by a virus, FeLV is a nasty feline disease. It causes the growth of malignant tumours in the lymphatic system, nervous system, nasal cavity, spleen, kidneys and thymus gland. This leads on to a range of problems affecting the nerves, bone marrow, intestine, blood and reproductive organs.
In severe cases the only treatment is to make the cat feel as comfortable as possible.
Initial symptoms are loss of appetite, breathing problems, fever, difficulty swallowing, weight loss, depression, diarrhoea and anaemia.
FeLV kills two thirds of the cats it infects.
The conclusion
Get your cats and kittens vaccinated.