Confused About Booster Shots

Daisy6

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No shot is given 3x per year. The rabies shot options are annual and every 3 years. Only kittens need more than one FVRCP shot.
 

jen

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Oh gosh, I made a mistake, I meant EVERY 3 YEAR shots, not 3x per year, I will go back and edit that. Thanks.
 

kashmir64

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Now I'm not sure if I truly understood what you were saying. I had a real bad headache yesterday and my mind wasn't fully there. What I thought you meant by booster, since he is so young, was his core shots.
My kittens got core shots every two weeks for a total of four. I have never given any other shot unless a medical issue arose.
Almost all my cats lived well into the late teens early twenties.
The ones that didn't had medical issues (ie. heart, kidneys).
 

Daisy6

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Booster means the second, third, and fourth core shot for kittens (like the MMR for little kids). The first FVRCP shot is not a booster.
 

jen

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The CORE shot is the FVRCP combo vaccine. Where was the rabies given in that series because that one is NOT boostered and not given more then once a year. Booster just refers to the fact that they need a second or series for any of them to be effective.

Kittens come in for their very first round of shots (the FVRCP combo vaccine) which is one single shot that injects prevention for a few different diseases. Then they come back in a few weeks after that for a "booster" shot which is a repeat of the same FVRCP combo vaccine. Then a 3rd time they come back for their final booster which is another repeat of that FVRCP vaccine and then another Rabies prevention shot.

Then at 1 year old they come in for a FVRCP and Rabies shot again as they are now basically adults. After that is when some vets still want them back every single year, and some tell them to come back in 3 years for the shots again. Some people have indoor cats and don't choose to come back for more shots.

This is where the problem arises where people think that if they aren't giving their cats more shots, they also don't need to see a vet. So therefore some cats go years without seeing a vet. Then there is the fact that cats hide anything that is wrong with them as much as they can so people think their cat is fine and healthy when they should be bringing it in to be checked out and don't catch issues until the cat stops eating or is having litterbox issues, etc and then they think a new problem has just started when in fact if the cat went to the vet for more frequent checkups they could have caught things years before like early kidney failure, and diabetes and things like that with a simple blood check. /end rant
 

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I asked several vets about the 1 year vs. 3 year rabies shots. All of them prefer the annual shot. They say the 3-year shot came first. What I don't understand is with a 3-year shot the risk of an injection site tumor (vaccine associated sarcoma) is higher than the 1-year shot. Can somebody explain this to me?
Most of the "1-year" and "3-year" shots are the exact same thing with a different label. The only vaccine that's different is Purevax, which wws originally approved for 1 year but they were trying to get 3-year approval. . .I don't know if they got it yet.
 

Willowy

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I dunno. I'll try to find a better source but here's one site that says it: AVMA 2017: Rabies Vaccination - What You Need to Know
"A dog is not considered to be vaccinated until 28 days after the initial inoculation. Rabies vaccinations are considered outdated 1 day beyond the 1-year or 3-year anniversary of the vaccination. (Generally, the only difference between the 1-year rabies vaccine and the 3-year rabies vaccine is how it’s labeled.) On revaccination, the pet is considered immunized immediately."
 

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Daisy6

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A cat is not biologically immunized immediately after receiving the injection. The cat becomes immune to a virus when the white blood cells are done doing their job. So the AVMA is just using that definition to prevent veterinarians from giving cats more than one shot the same day.
 

Daisy6

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Jen, kittens get only one rabies shot. It is always separate from the FVRCP vaccine.

I agree with you on the "don't need to come back" crap. It is one reason most vets see more dogs than cats. Some people give the "I can't afford it" excuse but I think they are just not looking around for less expensive veterinary practices. If you can't afford the vet, you can't afford the pet.
 

Daisy6

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Nothing. A lot of things the AVMA does are confusing.
 
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sara729

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Thank you all so much for the replies! It definitely makes more sense now, I was thinking I'd have to take my kitten in every 2 weeks for months amounting to quite a lot of shots but this thread definitely cleared it up. I've never had a cat younger than a year so this is all so new to me, but thank you for the thorough explanations!
 
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