Content
- What is and what is a vaccine for?
- At what age should your cat be vaccinated?
- Vaccination calendar
- More information about cat vaccines
If you own a cat or are going to adopt one, as a responsible owner, you will need to find out about many things. One of the most important is prevention in the face of many serious illnesses for them. This prevention is achieved with the vaccination proper.
Depending on where you live, some vaccines may or may not be mandatory and the frequency may also vary. Continue reading this PeritoAnimal article to find out about cat vaccination schedule, this way you will make sure your feline's health gets stronger.
What is and what is a vaccine for?
Vaccines are substances created to help the body fight certain diseases. These substances are usually given subcutaneously and contain the antigens needed to create antibodies in the cat's body. Depending on the disease you want to fight, vaccines can contain virus fractions, attenuated microorganisms, etc. It is with this light contact with the disease that the feline's immune system will create the necessary defenses to fight this disease if it appears.
The vaccines that must be administered to cats can change in mandatory and periodicity depending on the geographical area in which they are located, as it may happen that there are specific endemic diseases in that area and others have been eradicated. Therefore, it is our obligation as citizens of this area and as responsible pet owners, let us know which vaccines are mandatory and how often they should be administered to our cat. It's as simple as going to the veterinarian and asking him to tell us about the vaccination schedule that we should follow, since in addition to those required by law, he is likely to recommend a voluntary vaccine because it is really important for our partner's health. .
It is necessary that before vaccinating your cat, you must make sure that it is dewormed, in good health and that its immune system is sufficiently mature, as this is the only way for the vaccine to work and be effective.
As you can see, it's really important to vaccinate your pet and, for this reason, we recommend you to PeritoAnimal vaccinate every year, although it may seem unnecessary to you, in reality it is fundamental and vital both for the health of your feline and for yours, as there are some zoonoses that can be avoided with a simple vaccination.
Unfortunately, not vaccinating cats is one of the most common mistakes made by cat owners.
At what age should your cat be vaccinated?
The most important thing is to know that you should wait more or less until weaning age, since it is essential that your cat already has a somewhat mature immune system. While the puppies are in the mother's womb and while they are lactating, part of the mother's immune defenses are passed on to the puppies and so are protected for a while while creating their own defense system. This immunity that the mother transmits to them begins to disappear between 5 and 7 weeks of life. That is why, the ideal time to vaccinate your cat for the first time is 2 months of life..
It is very important that while your cat has not had the first complete vaccination, it does not go outside or interact with cats that are passing through your garden. This is because he is not sure of the level of defenses he can have in this period of time, between which his mother's acquired immunity will be depleted and the first vaccination will take full effect.
Vaccination calendar
With the exception of the rabies vaccine, there are no other vaccines required by law for domestic cats. Therefore, you should follow the vaccination schedule that the veterinarian recommends depending on the area you live in and some aspects of your cat's health.
It is essential that before being vaccinated, your cat undergoes a disease test such as feline leukemia and feline immunodeficiency.
Anyway, we present you to follow a basic calendar which is usually followed for cat vaccination:
- 1.5 months: You must deworm your cat so that the primary vaccination is later. Learn more about deworming in cats in our article.
- 2 months: Leukemia and immunodeficiency test.First dose of trivalent, this vaccine contains the vaccine against panleukopenia, calicivirus and rhinotracheitis.
- 2.5 months: First dose of feline leukemia vaccine.
- 3 months: Reinforcement of the trivalent vaccine.
- 3.5 months: Leukemia vaccine booster.
- 4 months: First rabies vaccine.
- Annually: From here on, an annual vaccine of each of the previously administered ones should be administered, as the effects must remain active as they diminish over time and are lost. Therefore, you should vaccinate your cat once a year with the trivalent vaccine, the leukemia vaccine and the rabies vaccine.
More information about cat vaccines
It is very important for your cat's health that the vaccinate annually, but it is even more important for cats that go outside and come into contact with other cats, of which we are often unaware of their health status.
The trivalent vaccine protects against two of the most common respiratory diseases in cats, feline rhinotracheitis and feline calicivirus, and the trivalent also contains the vaccine against one of the diseases that attack the digestive and blood system most seriously, feline panleukopenia. The vaccine against leukemia is essential for the cat's health, as contracting this disease is very complicated and often leads to the animal's death.
It is essential to give your cat the rabies vaccine, as this is a very serious zoonosis, it means that this disease is also transmitted to humans, so it is really advisable to vaccinate against rabies cats that go outside.
They exist other vaccines for domestic felines such as feline infectious peritonitis vaccine and chlamydiosis vaccine.
Finally, if you are going to travel with your cat to another part of the world, it is very important that you find out if there are mandatory vaccinations for cats in the country you are traveling to, as is often the case with the rabies vaccine, as well as being informed of the vaccinated diseases that are endemic to the area.
This article is for information purposes only, at PeritoAnimal.com.br we are not able to prescribe veterinary treatments or perform any type of diagnosis. We suggest that you take your pet to the veterinarian in case it has any type of condition or discomfort.