A transcript of the above video is provided below:
Today, we’re going to talk to you about cat vaccines, so you can know what our protocols are here, why we do them, and how we’re different than other hospitals. For cats, there are a lot of different vaccines out there and we give three, which is the minimum vaccines that are recommended by the American Association of Feline Practitioners.
So for kittens, there are three vaccines that we give. The first one is the FVRCP, or the Feline Viral Rhinotracheitis, Calicivirus and Panleukopenia, and that’s a vaccine that’s given every three to four weeks until they’re 16 weeks of age, then one year later, and then the manufacturer of our vaccine actually guarantees this vaccine for every four years after that. So actually, we’re giving less vaccines over the course of their life, which is great. This vaccine is also better because it is 0.5ml instead of 1.0ml, so it’s a smaller volume by half which makes it a more comfortable injection for these kittens, so we actually really like that as well.
The next vaccine is the FeLV vaccine, or the Feline Leukemia Virus vaccine. Now, we don’t give this to all adult cats. This is only given to adult cats that go indoor/outdoor where they have exposure to other cats. Indoor-only cats do not need this vaccine. However, young kittens do tend to escape and tend to get out more frequently than adult cats as we’re adjusting to this new life with kittens. However, the other reason why we give this to all kittens is because kittens are the most susceptible to getting FeLV if they are exposed to it. So we like to give them as much protection as possible so they don’t end up with a lifelong disease which may ultimately kill them. This is a series of two vaccines, one month apart, and then again at one year. If at that point they’re indoor only, they never get that vaccine again. However, if they continue to go outside, our vaccine is boostered every other year and they continue to get that throughout the course of their life, unless their lifestyle changes and they became indoor only.
And then, the last vaccine is the rabies vaccine. This is a public health issue, plain and simple, and that’s given anytime after four months old. They get this vaccine boostered again one year later and then once every three years. We do recommend indoor-only cats get this vaccine because we get reports a couple times a year of an indoor-only cat who exposed their entire family to rabies because the cats were exposed through a bat or some other animal that came in the house and gave them rabies, and then they disseminated it to their family. Rabies is a really, really serious disease. Even today, hundreds of children die daily from rabies worldwide and only five people have ever survived an active rabies infection. So it’s nearly universally fatal if you get it and start showing signs. So this is why we make such a big deal out of it. The reason why we’re so lucky that we don’t see cases of rabies really frequently at all, is because we vaccinate our pets. So please continue to keep their vaccines current and prevent any outbreak from emerging.
So that’s it, those are the three vaccines. Once your kitten is an adult cat, we really have decreased the amount and frequency of our vaccines. To recap, we give adult cats their FVRCP every 4 years, the Rabies vaccine once every 3 years, and the FeLV vaccine once every 2 years if your cat goes indoor/outdoor.
If you have any questions or your cat needs its vaccines, give is a call 760-633-2254.
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