It can feel unreasonable at first: your cat never leaves the house, so why should a cattery insist on vaccinations she has never needed? The answer is that the rule is not really about your cat's lifestyle. In a cattery she will breathe the same air, share the same building and be handled by the same staff as dozens of cats whose histories the cattery cannot verify. Its licence, its insurance and its duty to every other boarder rest on one standard applied to all.
Do Not Argue the Rule Away
The cattery's requirement is theirs to set, and asking for an exception puts them in an impossible position: one quiet exception breaks the standard that protects your cat too. Owners who push hard usually discover the cattery would rather lose the booking than the standard, and a cattery willing to bend its health rules for a stranger is telling you something worrying about its standards generally. Treat compliance as a quality signal. The catteries that check paperwork carefully are usually the catteries that clean carefully, separate cats carefully and notice illness early.
Start instead by asking exactly what is required: which vaccinations, what evidence they accept, and what their cut-off is for a stay to go ahead. Requirements vary between catteries, so work from their written list rather than assumptions.
Book the Vet With Margin
Then make the vet appointment early enough to leave slack. The vaccinations must be in date before the stay begins, and a course that has lapsed may need more than a single visit to put right, so an appointment left until days before departure may simply not fit. The vet and the cattery set the exact timing between them; follow the interval the vet gives you, confirm the cattery accepts the resulting dates, and keep the updated record somewhere you can produce it on arrival day. Build in slack for the ordinary accidents of planning: a postponed appointment, a cat who needs a recheck, paperwork that needs correcting.
While you are there, it is worth asking the vet whether your indoor cat's wider cover should be brought up to date anyway. Owners often find that travel, a possible future move or an emergency boarding need makes current records useful well beyond this one stay.
If the Timing Cannot Work, Change the Plan
If there is genuinely not enough time, change the plan rather than pressing the cattery. The honest alternative if the timing cannot work is a home sitter: your cat stays in her own territory, no group setting is involved, and no vaccination deadline decides whether your trip happens. Choose the sitter with the same care you would apply to any booking, agree visit times, feeding, tray care and emergency arrangements, and get the provider's agreed terms confirmed in writing before you leave. Many owners of indoor cats end up preferring this arrangement and use the cattery only once records are current and dates allow proper margin.
For a sitter-based stay, set up Care Pass inside KinsLe naming the one person who will visit, with access that ends when your trip ends.