By nature, cats are inquisitive and playful, exploring the world around them with all its sights, smells, tastes, and prey options. Unfortunately, this also means cats tend to come in contact with lots of bacteria, dirt, viruses, and other harmful things, whether through wild animals, diseased carrion, plants, or food and water sources. Montrose Veterinary Clinic, your veterinarian in Houston, Texas, recommends looking into cat vaccinations as soon as possible to protect your cat from severe and life-threatening illnesses.
Core Feline Vaccines
Panleukopenia
This life-threatening disease, a kind of parvovirus, attacks the gastrointestinal tract. Typically, kittens and younger cats are more severely afflicted by this disease, and the effects are quite painful. Signs include near-constant diarrhea and vomiting as well as fever, all of which result in cats becoming extremely dehydrated. The only treatment for feline panleukopenia involves offsetting the loss of fluids and boosting the immune system to try to survive the virus.
Rhinotracheitis
Another viral infection, rhinotracheitis is a kind of feline herpes which causes eye inflammation and dry eye as well as serious respiratory illness. Eye damage can actually progress to the point of cats losing an eye. This disease is highly contagious, passed between cats who share the same food and water bowls or other surfaces used by infected cats. Unfortunately, once cats contract the virus it remains in their systems even after the symptoms abate and may return.
Feline Calicivirus
Calicivirus is a stubborn condition borne of bacterial or viral vectors and shows up in the form of irritated and inflamed gums, sores and blisters on the tongue and near the teeth, and sometimes contributes to periodontal disease. These germs pass easily on bowls, food sources, and any surface cats can come in contact with infected cats’ saliva, such as where they lay during grooming.
Rabies
Your cat can contract rabies from even brief contact with wild animals who are infected, and germs are easily passed from animal to animal via bites or bodily fluids. In cats, rabies typically brings out aggression or listlessness, makes cats feverish and dehydrated, and causes great pain. Rabies has become so widespread across the country that most areas require rabies by law as a necessary cat vaccine.