Kitten

[Bring]

There is a local group that takes in ferrell cats, mostly from hoarders, and they spay/neuter them and give them their shots and then sell them as barn cats for $15. it's a great deal when you live out in the country with so many mice around.

 

[justbugged]

I remember when a cat or dog would get 2 vaccinations at about 8 weeks and 12 weeks and that would be the only vaccine that the pet would ever get. They lived the same amount of time as cat and dogs do today. I have always been on a very slow schedule to vaccinate my pets. I will say that I get it done about every 3 or 5 years. My pets are confined to my property for the most part. So I have a fairly good clue about where they are and what they are doing at all times.

There is a group here in the Seattle area that spays and neuters feral cat for free. I had the opportunity to take 10 cats there for a girl that I suspect is a hoarder. she was claiming to be a rescue group, but there was a lot of chat on craigslist that said her place was not fit for anyone. I do know that she placed a lot of animals, though not with very good judgement. I figured by getting some of the cats altered I was slowing down the potential problem at least a little bit. The Feral group also did vaccines at the same time. One vaccine is better than none.

 

[Animallover9]

It is worse than cat bites are nasty, cats also can carry rabies that cat needs to be caught and the head provided to the state lab and your hubby needs to see a doctor pronto.

The weird thing is that most feral cats don't have rabies

 

[theFox]

The weird thing is that most feral cats don't have rabies

The thing is there is no way to tell and rabies doesn't give a hoot or meow one way or the other just who or what it kills.

When you get a bite or scratch you need to know for a fact if the animal that bit you is up to date on its shots, playing percentages is a stupid thing to do.

Unfortunately the only way to test the animal is to put it down and send it to either a state or federal lab for testing.

 

[CrazyTalk]

If you alert the authorities you may very well have all the chicken put down because they are much more likely to have been exposed to the kitten. As I said earlier We had friends that had a bat in the house and because they couldn't prove that the bat hadn't bitten the cat, the CDC made them put their 15 year old cat down. Most kittens are the product of domestic cats that have been dumped. It is a rather unlikely scenario. IMHO

This has probably already been corrected, but birds can't get rabies. The chickens are at absolutely no risk.


Also, I doubt your story about the cat.


Rabies is only really contagious for about the last 10 days of the animal's life.

 

[CrazyTalk]

Yes they are the EXACT same vaccine. I'm a vet tech.

I second everything the poster above this one said.

I attended a highly prestigious rabies seminar and the modified-live vaccines (once given past mom's immunity) are good for the animals life. Once an animal is vaccinated (once past mom's immunity) the animal WILL NOT contract that disease. You would be very hard pressed to find a case otherwise.

The rescue I work for has been doing this for 16 years and has saved almost 10,000 cats and we only vaccinate ONCE in an animals life. (once past mom's immunity). We have NEVER had a single animal get sick in it's lifetime from something we vaccinated for.

MOST vets will not tell you this as vaccines are a HUGE money-maker for them!

This isn't really how it works. Vaccines are NEVER 100% effective (because things mutate, and immune systems don't all react the same way), and effectiveness declines as time goes on (the animal's body doesn't maintain antibodies for things it never gets exposed to). That decline may only be from something like 95% effective to 60% effective over 10 years, but saying they can't get something is misleading and dangerous.

As to never having an animal get sick for something they were vaccinated, why do you think people would bring the animal back to you, the rescue/shelter, and not their normal vet, if it got something later in it's life?