Rotten Pork Chowder

The vet Maggie saw yesterday also talked with me about vaccinations. I’ve always been skeptical of anti-vaccine movements, at least with humans, because it can be very dangerous and there is no scientific evidence of harmful effects from routine childhood vaccines. This vet was not recommending no vaccines, but she said that current veterinary immunology is recommending a very different schedule than the standard annual boosters. For cats her recommendations are:

Kittens: FVRCP combination vaccine. FeLV only if cat will be outdoors.
Kitten boosters: normal 8 and 12 week boosters, including FeLV if given.

Rabies: At the discretion of the owner. Not necessary unless the cat will be outdoors where there are raccoons or other wild animals that can attack cats. It is not required by law for cats in California.

Adult boosters:

FVRCP and rabies can be given every 3 years, or you can have a blood titer done first to see if the antibody level is still high. She said studies have shown that immunity lasts much longer than one year.

FeLV: No boosters necessary after kitten shots. Immunity lasts, and 95% of cases of non-immunized cats occur before the age of 1 year. (My non-immunized cat got FeLV in 1986 at the age of 9 months.) Of the cases in cats < 1 year old, the majority are in cats less than 6 months old. They have done laboratory studies deliberately exposing unvaccinated adult cats and it was very, very difficult to infect them unless they were immuno-deficient.

Why reduce the number of boosters? Besides cost, there is a slightly elevated risk of tumors at the vaccination site with repeated injections.