Lumpy Kittens

Well, Alfie now has a lump in his neck, and Jonah possibly has one. I really could cry. That would be a bit useless, however, so let me instead give a little more information, as I understand it :) (Update: Jonah's is his microchip... panic over :) )

Basically, the kittens are injected with  'dead' viruses. With live viruses (virii??) there's always the chance of the actual disease developing. Which is why it's not used, generally, and never in kittens who have immature resistance anyway. However, live viruses are actually much more efficient at prompting the body to make antibodies to that virus.

So kittens are injected with the killed viruses along with other stuff called adjuvants that poke the body into making a bigger immune response, thus better immunity. Only sometimes, the adjuvants can cause an extra immune response, and cause a smallish lump on the kitten's neck.

It doesn't mean kitten is not protected by the vaccination... it is! It doesn't mean the kitten will develop the illnesses they were vaccinated against... they won't, this is a reaction to the adjuvants, and the viruses used are killed viruses anyway.

The only time you should worry is if the lump suddenly grows bigger after a period of being the same size, is painful/ tender/ red, or your kitten seemed suddenly off colour. Really though that's just common sense!

There's an extremely rare condition called vaccine site sarcoma, which as its name suggests is a cancer at the vaccine site. This typically occurs from a few months to a few years after the vaccination. But I must reiterate this really is exceptionally rare- affecting between one in 1000 and one in 10,000 vaccinated cats. If you Google for vaccine lumps, this crops up a lot and there's lots of scary stuff about... ignore it :) The GCCF insists on kittens being vaccinated, and any breeder registering cats it hasn't vaccinated can be barred from breeding, I believe. This is because the diseases vaccinated against are real nasties. Feline panleukopenia, for example, has a 70% mortality rate IF the kitten is treated in time and very aggressively... if it is not, it's nearly always fatal.

This is a good site about vaccines/ vaccine reactions, if anyone fancies a read :)

Anyway I'm at the vets later, so if I pick up any more useful information, I will share it here.