A sad lesson: Pets MUST have a vet visit once a year, period, end of story.

I have learned a bitter but very significant lesson about pet care. 
When it comes to cats they MUST have vaccines once a year.

Now I will bet there are a bunch of you snorting and claiming: " I take care of MY pets! Of course they need to go to the vet once a year!" I hear that and of course I want to do as I should.  I also know how, due to the availability of money, lack of time, and, the shear horror that wells up in cats when they have to visit the vet; it can get put off.  Dogs are easy compared to catching the kitty for the car carrier and then there is the car ride, all the yowling and panting all the way to the vet office. I have felt; who needs that stress? I had convinced myself I of this.  All I can say now is: I was wrong.

Jerry was a beautiful solid gray short haired male, Buster is a tri-colored male, both neutered. My cats have been generally healthy, well fed.  They stay in most of the time but visit outside while humans are home....we live out in the country and work to control their interactions with wildlife in our area the best we can. Buster survived a rattlesnake bite a couple of years ago but other than that it seemed I could protect my kitties just fine; I know now I was very wrong.

We also have had kitty orphans.  Three in total, one got to go home right away( He was wearing an ID tag with a phone number--Lazlo, a black and white neutered adult male, His owner told us was missing for 6 months, it is good story--another time.) I say orphans because they wandered in off the prairie.  I felt sure at some point someone intended to keep them; they are neutered long-haired adult males.  Well, I just couldn't just chase them off.  They were stealing kitchen left overs from my chickens. Coyotes sing quite regularly.  We compromised and let them stay in the storage shed. They help control the vermin as well. That was in 2009.

We all have got along as long as long as the outside kitties were kept separate. Occasionally there would be a fight because of human error.  One is a beautiful orange tabby who is about 6 years old and the other is a stunning black on beige tabby...has a black strike down his nose and is probably about 10 to 12 years old. Orange Kitty and Kiran. After a couple of years Kiran got sick with what I thought was abscessed bad teeth. I found a vet who would help him pro bono, I was very grateful. She explained it as extreme gingivitis. Kiran recovered but he has bad breath and still drools to this day in varying degrees.  Long story endless there was a brief cat fight recently and then my gray kitty was sick. It began as a pea sized knot behind his jaw bone that grew to almond size and he looked to me like he had the mumps. He right away wouldn't eat which is very bad news for kitties. He didn't make it and passed away at home yesterday.

Our present vet believes it was feline calicivirus. I now feel sure the vet would have come to it sooner if I had made it a point to say Jerry's shots were not up to date.  I was paying so much attention to his symptoms and how he and Kiran fought.  It is my fault and it is very hard to accept, so I "Googled" it. It led me to the Wikipedia page on feline vaccines. It seems there are "core" vaccines that help prevent this and other feline illness. They need to be administered every year. I was ignorant of this fact. So I am pretty sad. I feel very guilty of bad decisions and am resolved to be different in the future.  I feel that with yearly visits we would have enjoyed a few more years with my beloved gray kitty.  Our new vet makes home visits which is just wonderful.  A box of facial tissues, a few old towels, and a clean old sheet over the kitchen island, and our veterinarian has a nice examining table to use. We are planning for the next vet visit to get all our fur babies looked at and caught up on vaccines. So I can honestly say things are already different but I wish it didn't mean that Jerry had to leave us.