Vaccinations - Yay or Nay?

I don't think cats here in UK are routinely vaccinated against nearly as many things as in the US / Canada but I still wonder about whether indoor cats need it.

However, I insure my furbabies and the insurers require vaccinations to be kept up to date unless you have a vet verified reason that they are not.

One of my previous girls developed a 1 cm diameter bald patch when she was about 10.  I took her to the vet and he said it was traumatic hair loss on the site of her vaccination.

I also show Mouse currently and for showing you need the UK routine vaccination card up to date.  

The only cat I didn't keep vaccines up with was my other previous girl, snow leopard:  she was vet phobic and the vet wrote to the insurers to say it was contraindicated for her to be vaccinated or regularly examined due to the level of stress these would cause her.

New research suggests that the FVRCP or 3 in 1 injection is what causes chronic kidney failure in older cats.  This was a University study. The companies use feline kidney cells to develop the vaccine, so the body mistakenly attacks the kidneys!!!

I believe the eye/nose drop form of the 3 in 1 injection is safe, as it was not made using feline kidney cells to develop it.  Although you may want to double check that. 

I am not a strong believer in vaccination, especially in animals.  If your pet dies from a vaccine, it is difficult to prove, and you are only entitled to the value of your pet in a court case.  Who is going to sue if their $100 adopted pet, drops dead from the vaccine?  Or if your pet does get a disease from the vaccine, it will take decades of research before anyone would be able to link that disease back to the vaccine.  Even now, there is limited evidence that the vaccine causes chronic kidney failure, so the companies could still get away with killing your pet.

The same with human vaccines. You could get a vaccine today, a booster next year, and come down with a disease 10 yrs from now that was caused by your vaccine!  But can you prove it? Nope. The early human vaccines were known for causing issues- they were often contaminated with viruses found in monkeys, and sometimes the active virus remained active (The Polio vaccine actually causing Polio for instance)

Vaccines need to be given based on the risk. If your cat is indoors and you aren't bringing home any stray cats, you should be okay.  If you have an outdoor cat, are bringing home strays or kittens, than you need to vaccinate.

jazzygemmy said:

 
Why a rabies shot every year? Why can't you guys get the three year shot? I know there is a 1 and a 3 year versions, but to make the law be once per year seems silly. Maybe there is a difference between the effectiveness?

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The law in Texas, concerning rabies vaccinations, is "not" once per year. Texas state law says a dog/cat must be "vaccinated" against rabies so the 1 or 3 year vaccine is not in question.

The 3 year rabies vaccine is a synthetic vaccine and my female vet has seen more problems in cats (tumors) at the injection point with this vaccine. She advised me doing the 1 year vaccine for my cat instead of the 3 year vaccine since the 1 year vaccine is not synthetic and she's not seen any health problems for cats with this vaccine.

My Rhys goes in on Monday for his one-year booster. The lady on the phone called it the "URI booster". Does this sound right?

This is a snippet off the info l pulled off my vet's website:

We do believe a kitten requires vaccines at eight weeks or age then repeated again at twelve weeks of age and sixteen weeks of age. A booster vaccine is strongly recommended for the following year. At this point titer testing and a specific vaccine protocol for your pet would be introduced.

ls this good, acceptable? l've always had my cats vaccinated (without thought) and they've always been long-lived with no diseases/conditions (in spite of what l fed them), so l'm getting a little antsy now trying to go against that experience. 

Rhys's first 2 sets of vaccines were given by the breeder's vet, and my vet administered the third (then the subsequent rabies shot). Does it really need this booster a year later?

Andrya, did you read this section of http://www.catinfo.org/?link=vaccines? There's more info that follows about how to make this judgment call.

The AAFP and WSAVA-VGG guidelines suggest giving a booster FVRCP 1 year after the last kitten vaccine - i.e. - when the cat is ~ 16 months of age.  However, if the kitten responds as he should to the kitten series, this booster should not be needed.  The rationale behind the 1 year booster shot is to cover any kitten that did not properly respond to the kitten series.

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l did read it, and that is why l'm in a quandary. l'm very happy with my vet - she's the feline specialist at the practice and is VERY progressive. She recommends homemade (cooked) food, offers recipes, etc. She is very good.

So to see this, your quote, and to see my vet's quote where the titering begins AFTER the first booster puts me at odds. l'll discuss it with her when l'm there l guess. He needs his annual check up anyway, he's 17 months and was last seen at his 6 month neuter.

I think the booster shots then titers later is a good idea.

thevegancuddler said:

Anyone have any info about the advantages and disadvantages of vaccines? It's taken as a default that we should get our cats vaccinated, but with the on-going debate about cancer and disease-causing agents in vaccines intended for humans, I'm wondering if some people feel that it's best to not vaccinate cats at all. Is there anyone here who doesn't vaccinate their cats for health reasons?

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I have a serious problem with the "vaccine scam" and todays market for them. The need for some of these vaccines depend on the animals environment and where you travel and go with them. I don't vaccinate my cats for anything. The rabies vaccine is known to kill off the organs in small pets because the dosage is too strong for them. Mine are all indoors and don't need it, so I don't do that with them.

With small dogs, some of these vaccines are life threatening, although some states force people to have it done, which is horrific because not all dogs need it if they're mostly indoor pets. Some people don't realize when they allow their pets to be vaccinated, that these combo vaccines are doing more harm than good in some cases. It's all a matter of doing your own research to find out what's actually being injected into your pets and why. Of course if you have your pet groomed outside the home and travel with them, there's not much you can do about it and must have it done.

I found out that the veterinary clinics here are in bed with the city and county too. People who don't regularly vaccinate their pets are reported by the vet clinics to the country and city and then they are fined and told if they don't comply their pet will be confiscated from them. The way the country and city know you still have these pets is through the Census people have to fill out yearly... Information is power...you don't have to tell them everything...if you get the hint.

peaches08 said:

I think the booster shots then titers later is a good idea.

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Mogli's one-year booster shot is due at the end of the month. He'll get that, and afterwards we'll do titers.

I never had my cat vaccinated.she was an indoor cat,and we just treated her with respect,and affection all the time.Never noticed any problems with behaviour etc...

She always had to have 2-4 belly rubs a day-lol.

Maybe for an outdoor cat i can see it,but personally i,ll never do it because we prefer indoor cats.

I stopped vaccinating my cats because i believe it was caused Mewlittle's tumors ,the only time it is done when i get them spayed or neutered because my vets go i cant do the surgery tell there updated.

It would be best to vaccinste. It will protect them from dying from illnes. I say yay.

Okay, a bit of an old thread, but here goes:

I've never met anyone who got annual vaccinations for their cat. However, the only people I've known with strictly outdoor cats were on farms and the cats just sort of appeared and decided to stay. Everyone I know with cats, with the exception of the farm cats, had the 3 kitten vaccines done and that's all. Kittens from pet stores, SPCA, and similar sources always have their shots already so that's a given, and people generally vaccinate the kittens they pick up from local classifieds just because of their questionable background.

To be honest, I'm not satisfied with the results of studies on the annual vaccines. The effectiveness of the vaccines seems to be quite variable and generally not as high as I'd like. I certainly am afraid of what the cats could catch, but the current annual vaccines seem to be a bit of a gamble. There's a good chance they won't do anything at all, and there's a risk on top of that of tumors. My cat used to get the 3-year rabies shot, because bats like to hang out around our balcony(we're in a fourth floor apartment, so that's about the extent of her outdoor exposure), but now that she's getting older the vet and I agreed to stop vaccinating her and just not let her out unsupervised.

PJ will be staying in a cat hotel for a few days over christmas. I've been shown vaccination records for the other cats that will be staying there, and they all have their annual vaccines, unlike PJ. This situation reminds me of the flu shots that are handed out every year. I don't bother getting them because they only vaccinate against specific strains. And since such a large portion of the population goes in for these shots, suddenly that vaccination is only guarding against the least common strains of the flu(because there's a lot less carriers) and other strains become a greater concern. This is why many people complain that they still get the flu after receiving the shot. I question the effectiveness of the panleukopenia vaccine for a similar reason. We know how long the virus can survive without a host, giving it plenty of time to diverge genetically from the strains we vaccinate against. If I get my cat vaccinated for panleukopenia, it may or may not protect her from a few strains of the virus, but should she contract it afterwards I can never know if it is because the vaccination didn't work or because she encountered a strain that the vaccine wouldn't target. I think a lot more research needs to be done on this topic.

Influenza undergoes genetic drift or genetic shift while within the host. And many people that have claimed to have gotten the flu from the flu shot...they didn't have the flu, they usually had a cold IME.

However, I agree that vaccinations should be better researched but in order to do that effectively we must eliminate variables. That's virtually impossible to do in a home setting. Until then, we have titers. However, most people don't get titers. So how are most vets/emergency/hotels supposed to respond?

No. None of our seven get annual vaccines anymore. They're all indoor cats, the eldest one is now over 20 years old, and the youngest is about 3 years old. If it were up to me, they wouldn't get the 3-year rabies vaccine either, but Rick is adamant about that one. But they get nothing else.

As kittens, they did get the original "kitten shots", but once they're done with that part, they're done. 

Our vet has it on the furkids' charts that they get nothing other than rabies. The vet used to question our decision until he lost one of his cats to sarcoma from a vaccine. He says nothing to us now....and they no longer push for the annual vaccines at the hospital. They do push for rabies, but that's it. 

Mogli got his one-year RCP booster today. I was planning on just getting the titers done in the future, but the vet pointed out that he has to have the RCP vaccination if we board him, which we did twice this past summer. I called this afternoon and was told that the RCP shot had to be up to date (no titer tests accepted) or they wouldn't take him.

Geez, jcat. That's absurd. That's the whole point in titers, to prove immunity! Giving an injection doesn't prove immunity. We had to have titers run to work in the hospital OR and quite a few of the kids were shocked to find that their titers were inadequate for vaccinations against hepatitis and chicken pox. Oh well, what can ya do?

It's absurd, but "the rules". At least it's just one non-adjuvanted shot.

Why don't you just have the vet trim the nails. They do a great job.

thevegancuddler said:

Anyone have any info about the advantages and disadvantages of vaccines? It's taken as a default that we should get our cats vaccinated, but with the on-going debate about cancer and disease-causing agents in vaccines intended for humans, I'm wondering if some people feel that it's best to not vaccinate cats at all. Is there anyone here who doesn't vaccinate their cats for health reasons?

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I only vaccinate as kittens. Holistic vet -
Drdym.com