Community Chat

[FuzzyFace]

Oh my gosh, my poor kitty! We took him to get his shots yesterday and before I tell you what happened I need to give you a little background.

Boo is 6 years old; a big, burly looking cat -- and even burlier than we thought because when the vet weighed him, he was up to 14-1/2 lbs; he's gained about 2 lbs. in the last year and even though the vet didn't say anything about his weight, I think he's bordering on being overweight. He's a Maine Coon, which is a big breed, but he's on the medium end of the size scale.

Back to the point: BooBoo is, despite his robust look, rather delicate in that -- as we found out the hard way the first time we got his shots after we adopted him -- he also gets pretty intense reactions to his vaccinations. The first time we vaccinated him, about a year after he came to live with us, he ran a high fever and staggered around. I rushed him back to the vet; she told us it was a reaction to the shots and in the future, give them to him one at a time instead of all 3 at once.

So, hubby took him in and they gave him 2 shots: leukemia and rabies (in Washington state, cats HAVE to have a rabies shot every 3 years; I'd skip it but the state of WA won't let me). She was very firm in her belief that if Boo was going to have any reaction at all, he'd have it within 30 minutes or so, despite previous experience--she wasn't trying to pressure DH, just reassure him. (If it makes any difference, his shots were given one in each hip.)

So DH brought Boo home and a few hours later he started getting both lethargic and acting as though he didn't feel well. A while later during the evening, before we went to bed around 11 o'clock, he barfed up hair balls several time, which he almost never does. During the night, he just couldn't seem to settle down; he seemed very restless. (During the evening, before bed, he also followed my husband around, crying and begging to be petted--very needy, much more than usual.)

SO--so much for what the vet said. I'm sure glad we didn't have him given all 3 shots at the same time. We'll take him back next week for his distemper shot, and it'll be interesting to see if he gets a reaction to that too.

Poor Boo; I felt so sorry for him last night, even while we were cleaning up the hairballs. He seems ok today but DH didn't get much sleep last night and he's so tired we cancelled our plans for today. But we love our Boo and are happy to take care of him and spoil him as much as we can.