Cat pregnancy lasts about two months, so once they become pregnant after their heat cycle, unless you see those subtle signs, they'll start showing their pregnancy in the last few weeks. Around six to seven weeks from when their heat cycle ended, you would start to see the belly growing. They would probably stop the screaming and yelling, and that might make you suspicious because if they don't find a suitor during their heat cycle, they will go back into heat every couple of weeks. So if it's been a while, that may be a sign.

You can usually tell they're in heat. Female cats in heat can be obnoxious. They howl and put their hind end in your face and walk with it up. They're flashing because they want somebody to come around. The vocalization and the stance tend to be the biggest signs.

Usually, the sign people pick up on most is when the cats start showing, and at that point, you're a couple of weeks away. You're kind of in the home stretch. So we were laughing that if you can tell, you're too late. A lot of the early signs can be very subtle. They're potentially not as active and not eating as well. Most people pick up on it at the end when they start to show their pregnancy a little bit more.

It's important for a couple of reasons: the quality of vaccines makes a huge difference. I'm not going to point fingers at any of these places where they might be selling vaccines, but I always wonder about the quality of the vaccine manufactured in the first place and the reaction rate to vaccines. Second, how are those vaccines handled? They had to be refrigerated continuously. If they have not been properly handled and refrigerated, say it's a hot summer afternoon, and a truck backs up with some pallets on the back loading dock of a big box store with cat dog vaccines, and it sits out there for a few hours, it's probably not the best thing for you or for your cat or your dog for that matter. The other consideration, I can't tell you how many times I've had clients who tried to give their dogs or cats vaccines, and they shot all the way through because they don't really know or are not comfortable giving a vaccine under the skin. They go all the way through the skin and squirt the entire contents out on the other side of the pet. They just wasted a vaccine unnecessarily. The two big concerns I have are the quality of the vaccines they're going to purchase and also the actual administration of it. In North Carolina, and I can't speak for other states, only veterinarians can purchase rabies vaccines, and only veterinarians, veterinary technicians, and registered individuals by law can legally administer a rabies vaccine.

Good question. My recommendation is with extreme caution. You'd actually have to know your environment really well, but because I am concerned about feline leukemia and distemper in cats, I would personally wait because, typically, we can start these vaccines early and get them completely vaccinated by the time they're about four months of age, you can let them go outside. There's no need to do it beforehand unless you just don't want a cat in the house, and that's the choice. But I recommend that they should be fully vaccinated before letting them go outside.

If a kitten misses a vaccine, at the first opportunity, you bring it to one of our clinics so we can get it up to date.

There's always the potential. With kittens and cats, we seldom see vaccine reactions. In my experience, most of the vaccine reactions I see are associated with the feline leukemia vaccine, which we talked about, which is ideally meant for outdoor cats. However, usually, the biggest side effect we see with the leukemia vaccine is that those cats are kind of sluggish for about half a day, maybe a full day. Then, after that, they're back to being themselves again. The other consideration we always have to think about when we see a cat for vaccines is if they go home and they're just not themselves; you can imagine how incredibly traumatic coming into a veterinary clinic must be for them. We get the carrier, and it might be a complete rodeo trying to get them into the carrier in the first place.

Then you put them in a car, and they're freaked out by the car. Then you bring them into the veterinary practice or one of our events. Then we get the vaccine, they go back in the car, and they have a whole freak out from that. It's an adrenaline overload; it's off the chart. So a lot of those cats just need some time to decompress after a stressful situation like that, but that's not all cats. There are ways of trying to help with that. Quite simply, and I'll mention two things very quickly. One is a product called Feliway, which comes in a spray that you can spray into their carrier, and catnip toys. Just put a catnip toy into their carrier. Those are two things that will help, but an answer to the question, can they get an adverse reaction to vaccines? Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? No, not at all.