When it comes to vaccinating your cat, we encourage pet parents to use a common sense approach. Vaccines can be helpful to protect your kitty from fatal illnesses, but they can also cause fatal problems if overused.
Did you know research has proven that the majority of vaccines will protect your cat for life? Veterinarians don’t always share this information with their clients, which results in many cats being over vaccinated. Over vaccinating your cat can result in vaccine related illnesses that can sometimes prove fatal to our feline friends.
Using the common sense approach to vaccinating your cat
Rabies is a common vaccine that many vets still recommend annually or every three years. If your cats are indoor, what is the risk that they contract rabies? Is it possible that a bat will fly into your home and bite your kitties? Likely, no. So does it make sense to vaccinate them for a disease they cannot get? Save the money and buy them a toy instead. 🙂
The same common sense rules can be applied to all vaccines. If you do not have an FeLV positive cat in your home there is no reason to vaccinate for FeLV either. We do not recommend the feline leukemia vaccine for any cats, as it usually doesn’t work and the side effects cause much more damage than good.
If you have a cat that is allowed unsupervised outside, or an indoor kitty that you worry is unprotected from illness, there’s a way around over vaccinating your cat. Ask your vet for a titer test. This is a blood test that will show if your cat is already protected from disease. If the titer test shows that your cat is already immune then there’s no need to vaccinate and you can have peace of mind that your cat is protected.
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