We encourage you to make health decisions for your Coon in partnership with your veterinarian. The purpose of CaliMaine's health tips is not to provide medical advice, but instead, to arm you with information that will inspire informed discussions between you and your veterinarian. We hope the information we provide will help.

Ask for a health certificate for your new kitten

CaliMaine kittens receive a wellness checkup from our veterinarian prior to going to their new homes. A health certificate accompanies our sales contract. Above, during one such wellness visit, Snowflake, one of our Karelian Bear Dogs who came along for the ride, made sure that the health professionals took good care of his kitten.

We recommend spaying/neutering at ten months of age

We prefer to give our CaliMaine Coons the opportunity to grow to their full potential. Therefore, we do not alter our animals any younger than ten months of age unless there is another health or behavioral reason for doing so. We have waited as long as a year and four months to alter our males without any spraying incidents. This timing can vary with each individual cat, however, do if you have any questions, feel free to contact us to discuss.

We do not use absorbable sutures when having our females spayed

Absorbable sutures are generally known to promote a higher incidence of allergic response, and spaying female is a more invasive operation than neutering a male. Even though a severe reaction is not common, the response can be so severe that it is life threatening. A second visit to the vet to remove the sutures will help ensure that your beloved Coon is healing successfully.

We ask our vet for "non-adjuvant" vaccines

Vaccines should be maintained under refrigeration to maintain their efficacy. At CaliMaine, we administer our own vaccinations using modified live vaccine. We acquire the vaccine from our veterinarian to help ensure proper handling.

There is evidence that adjuvants (substances that boost the immune response, such as those added to killed virus vaccines that, by themselves, may not cause a strong enough immune response) are the cause of vaccine-associated sarcomas. Modified live vaccines and vaccines using recombinant DNA technology do not contain adjuvants.

It is also preferable to use vaccine that has not been grown on feline kidney tissue culture, such as the recently-released Intravet Continuum FVRCP vaccine, as vaccines manufactured using this process can cause cats to devlop antibodies to their own renal (kidney) cells.

We vaccinate our Coons by injection every three years

The length of immunity for FVR (feline viral rhinotracheitis, caused by Herpes Virus 1) and FCV (feline calici virus) is believed to be shorter than for FPV (feline panleukopenia virus), which is generally considered to be five years. There is evidence that intranasal vaccines may not protect for three years. Cats who go outdoors are at risk for other, very serious diseases, which is one important reason that our contract with you require that you keep your CaliMaine Coon indoors.

We do not rely on serum antibody titers as our guide to vaccination frequency

There are two types of immunity protection: humoral and cell-mediated. For many infectious agents, it is not known which type of immune response is more important in protecting against infection, and serum antibody titers only measure antibody concentrations in the serum component of the blood. It may not be necessary to vaccinate an animal with a negative titer, since cell-mediated immunity may be the principle immune response necessary to prevent disease.

No standardized laboratory methods for determining antibody concentration in serum exist in the United States, so the correlation between antibody titer and protection is believed by many to be poor.