Last week the Wall Street Journal asked how far people would go to keep their dog (or really any pet for that matter) alive. As an example of the two ends of the spectrum, they suggested the following, starting with the “not much” line of thinking:
“One Dallas reader took me to task for spending so much on my dog and then daring to write about it in a column called ‘Cheapskate.’ He wrote, ‘Basically, my ‘frugal’ belief (I do not consider myself a cheapskate) is that I paid $110 for our family cocker spaniel from a rescue organization six years ago, and I will pay no more than $110 to keep her alive.’ “
On the other hand, some are willing to pay almost anything:
“A Massachusetts reader put it eloquently as he described his efforts to stretch out the life of his 14-year-old ‘best friend,’ afflicted with pneumonia, an impacted colon and cancer. ‘There are many who think burning 18 grand to keep a dog around for six or 12 extra months is madness,’ he wrote. ‘Sometimes I think so, too. But my wife died from lymphoma two years ago, and I have no children. What am I going to do, buy a bigger television set?’”
Have you decided how much you’d spend to save your pet? If so, what financial steps have you taken (like adding more to your emergency fund) to support such a plan of action?
How Far Would You Go To Keep Your Dog Alive? [The Wall Street Journal]
— FREE MONEY FINANCE
(Photo: fantasysage)
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Dear Consumerist: It’s unfair to post a picture that looks just like my dog, and then ask me how much I’d spend to save her. But here’s my answer anyhow, sort of. I spent this last Christmas morning with her at the Emergency Veterinary Clinic, and then another morning two days later, and then placed her in special care boarding for several days to give her a better shot at recovery than what she could get at home. I do draw the line at chemotherapy or any other painful treatment that might allow me to have her longer, but at the expense of her quality of life.
I wont’ buy a pet until I can afford $1000 in emergency pet bills.
We spent almost $10K when our late, beloved Maltese, Macy, developed a neurological disease called GME. There was a chance it could go into remission, and we felt like we never wanted to look back and feel we didn’t do enough for her. She gave us SO much love and happiness.
Sadly, things didn’t work out the way we hoped. Despite repeated visits to the MSU veterinary hospital, a wonderful veterinary neurologist in Boston who worked with us for free and our very large outpouring of money, Macy didn’t get well. A little over a year ago, she had a series of seizures (she’d had them in the past, as well), and this time, she just wasn’t recovering. Her motor skills were gone — she could hardly walk, couldn’t eat unless we held the food up to her mouth, etc. We realized that as desperately as we wanted to keep her with us, it would be selfish to do so any longer.
We’ve never regretted our decision. We wanted to be 100 percent sure we did everything we could to help her get better, and we did. If we had known that her disease would never go into remission and that she would have such a struggle, we probably wouldn’t have done it … but not being psychic, we made the best choice we could have, given the circumstances.
Yeah I love my four (FOUR!) dogs, and my eldest Labrador, Miles – who’s my favorite – is about 12 years old. As much as i love him, if he’s stricken with cancer or something? I’m not going to dump $2k into prolonging the inevitable. He’s on his last little span as it is. I’ll make him comfortable and miss him terribly when he’s gone. not worth spending $2k so that he could have 1-2 more miserable years…
however, if it was a case of a broken foot or something, that could heal and he’d be as chipper as before, then I wouldn’t blink to spend some dough to fix him up.
It just depends. But I think at some point – and I extend this to people as well -Â it’s just time to say you fought the good fight, life was great, but it’s time to put the ducks in order.
To me, this is like asking how much money you’d be willing to spend to save your child. Pets aren’t meant to be accessories. If you want to have one, you have to be able to commit to having a new member in the family, and yes, that includes money. It’s the same with deciding to have a baby. If you aren’t willing to care for him/her should pricey medical needs arise, then you aren’t fit to have either.
PET INSURANCE!
I have 3 cats and a Great Dane. It costs me $58/mo to insure all 4 animals. When the dog ate a plastic oven mitt and needed a bunch of work to remove it from his stomach, the insurance paid for itself right there. My friends insured their terrier, and were able to send him to a $5k surgery to remove cateracts from both of his eyes that would have blinded him at age 4.
For the price you’d pay for pet food for a month, you can make sure that you’ll never have to choose between Fluffy or that cruise you’ve been planning. I highly recommend Pet’s Best, I heard about them on “Cat Chat” on the Martha Stewart XM channel and they’ve really been great to work with. Honestly, my youngest cat costs just $15 a month. I think it’s the responsible thing to do if you’re going to own a pet. Just as you’d plan to have monthly food costs, plan to have a monthly pay-it-forward approach to medical issues (and there will be issues!) so you never have to be in a difficult situation.
Had a favorite golden retriever a couple years ago that got into a tangle with some wild animals after running off looking for a girl. He was 10 years old and very loved. Took him to a vet and he had to stay there a week for surgeries and healing. Shortly thereafter, due to complications we had to put him down. Lots of money for nothing. I swore I’d never own another dog. A year later got another dog…this time a fixed golden lab.
You do what you have to do.
I’m sorry, but if you will spend “no more than $110″ to keep your pet alive, then you ARE a cheapskate, AND a heartless asshole who does not deserve to own a pet. I hope your dog shits in your shoes and mauls your face.
Pets are living creatures, not expendable, replaceable possessions that you just toss out & replace with a cheaper model. My 9 year old chihuahua has been spayed, has had cataracts removed, has special skin ointment & shampoo, and gets prescription parasite meds. How much have I spent on her? I don’t know. I don’t count because she’s a member of my family and I don’t view her as an expense. Would you count pennies if your child needed medical care? No? Then why do you with your dog? Because it’s “just a dog” and PEOPLE need help, you say? Well screw people. They’re just people, filthy, selfish, parasitic humans. There are too damn many people on earth & we need to let a few die off anyway. I’d save a drowning dog before a drowning human ANY day.
I adopted a cat knowing he has FIV… and not knowing he has diabetes. The shots, insulin, and twice-daily petsitting while I was out of town added up to at least $50…60/month? I don’t even want to know. Not to mention that before the shot schedule was under control, he was always at the vet with $100-plus visits: FIV cats can have weakened immune systems (it’s the kitty form of HIV), having huge spikes in his blood sugar just made his immunities almost useless. He was on various pills, mouth injections, ear injections…for nearly the first year.
I’ve since snobbed-out and switched him to entirely grain-free wet food, and he is insulin-free. Also pill-free. Someone mentioned this earlier, but it is well worth it to spend the money on GOOD pet food than to deal with taking them back and forth to the vet.
Most importantly: I don’t regret one penny I’ve spent. The cat is freakin’ great.
These animals have been domesticated by us, and are therefore almost entirely dependent upon us. We have already chosen the responsibility of their care, regardless of ‘convenience.’ I have a lot of disrespect for those who consider animals “things” or “investments.” Your dog would risk his/her life for you, and you won’t spend more than $110 on him/her?
I spent $1300 on an amputation of a dogs leg. It was money well spent.
Before I got my cat almost a year ago, I wouldn’t have imagined I could have gotten so attached to an animal. I dunno how far I’d go or how much I’d spend to keep her alive, but hopefully I won’t have to find out.
I actually just recently had to put my cat Holly to sleep. She just appeared on my doorstep one day, and I started feeding her, and she just walked inside… she was an older cat, and I had her for a year and a half. This summer, she completely crashed, and we took her in and found out she had Chronic Renal Failure. We did an IV, which cost $2200+, and gave her fluids subcutaneously, and while she got better initially, her condition started degrading again. She would just sit in a corner and hide, and was nothing like her normal self.
I knew her quality of life would just keep getting worse, and I was only keeping her alive because I couldn’t stand the thought of loosing her. So we put her to sleep.
I loved her so much, I’d spend it again if I had to. Every time I open the door to my apartment now, I expect to see her there, waiting for me like she used to, and my heart drops a little when I realize she’s gone.
She wasn’t a pet. She was my roommate, and my friend. I can’t understand why anyone would think of a pet as an “investment” or refuse to spend more on them than they cost. If it were a person instead of an animal, most people would spare no expense to save them. Why would it be any different for an animal? They love just as much.
blech. Just heard from my mom today that she had to have her horse (which she’s had for about 15 year) put to sleep. A month ago she’d been diagnosed with PSSM (a hereditary disease that keeps them from metabolizing large quantities of carbs and wastes the muscles, or something). The only way to treat it is with a change of diet, which she did. A week or so ago, she also put her on this pain medication, so she could move around better, and she perked up a bit, but she was losing a lot of hair. But this morning, her mouth was full of blood. Mom called the vet, he told her she should be put to sleep. Afterwards he looked in her mouth and discovered a bleeding tumor. He figured she probably had cancer all over. Mom said if she hadn’t called the vet and he decided she should be put down, she would have let nature take its course, at least until it became too obvious that she was suffering and wouldn’t get better. She’s really sad, but she’s glad she at least saved her horse some suffering. It cost I don’t know how much for the euthanasia, and $250 to haul her away afterward. While you can pay money to extend your pet’s life, sometimes it’s better to pay money to let it go.
My older cat is in renal failure. He’s costing me about $250 – $350/month in routine expenses — vet visit (which the vet is being really good about keeping cheap!) every month, subQ fluids nightly, special food, now two new shots (which at least we could get at the people pharmacy instead of the compounding pharmacy, so cheaper). Before that, he was diabetic for about two years, at a cost of $98/vial of insulin, which lasted 2-3 months, plus all needles, etc. It was around $1500 when he was initially diagnosed with diabetes — at the time, we were broke, and my mother helped us pay (we would have scrounged it somehow, otherwise).
I have a “vet” category on my budget tracking program and I ran it a few weeks ago to see what he’d cost me since New Year’s. I decided not to do that anymore. It was a LOT.
His quality of life is still excellent — he’s losing weight and looks terribly thin, but as long as we hydrate him, he’s in no pain and he’s behavior is normal. But I think and worry about this EVERY DAMN DAY. I teach medical ethics (among other things), so I think a lot about when it’s appropriate to euthanize — and I think a lot about the fact that there are lots of PEOPLE out there who can’t afford the treatment my CAT is getting for renal failure. I won’t stop, because when I brought him into my home I took responsibility for caring for him, but it bothers me a LOT, especially when I wake up at 3 a.m., that my cat can get better medical care than many of my fellow Americans.
@Eyebrows McGee: Hear, hear, re the distressing fact that our pets can get better health care than lots of people do. A lot of doctors are dropping out of my company health plan’s network, so I am pretty sure my cats see better doctors than I do.
> I actually just recently had to put my cat Holly to sleep. She just appeared on my doorstep one day, and I started feeding her, and she just walked inside… she was an older cat, and I had her for a year and a half.
Interesting story, but how would you know if the cat simply wasn’t lost, or belonged to someone else?
My wife’s cat will simply run away and never come back if it gets expensively sick.
I have a cat who has epilepsy. We spend about $50/month on the two medications required to keep her seizures controlled. She is active and happy as a result.
She had an episode of neurogenic pulmonary edema (basically, her lungs filled with fluid during a seizure–she came out of the seizure gasping, unable to breath, and yes, you can tell when a black cat turns blue). We rushed her to the emergency vet, where they were about to give her lasix or something to deal with the fluid when she had another seizure, couldn’t breathe, and went into cardiac arrest. Did we want kitty CPR or should they let her go? The decision had to be made in seconds, or it would become a decision by default. That afternoon, I’d been playing catch with her; that evening she’d been curled up with me on my desk purring as I worked. “Save her,” I said. After the CPR, it took several days in an oxygen chamber and many meds to get her healthy again. That was about four or five years ago and she is still with us, happy and well.
I have no idea what we spent on saving her life; I don’t care. I can imagine how hard it would be to have to make the decision based on money rather than on the animal’s welfare and likelihood of recovery. I am grateful to have the financial resources not to be forced into that calculation, because what my pets contribute to my quality of life is priceless to me.
Hundreds. I’d pay hundreds for any given event. Not thousands. You start talking thousands with me and I’m talking, “Goodbye, my beloved pet.” I love my dog and treat him like royalty, but shit happens and there are other financial priorities.
To save my wife, or a child? Unlimited. I’d sell my soul to the devil. Or put a bullet in my own head so they can have my heart, if that’s what it took. Yeah, f’ing creepy, sorry.
In sports they have a term called Value Over Replacement Player.
People give away kittens all the time.
The article called Cheapskate in the WSJ tells much about the person who wrote it. I would say if the world took his/her approach then what did it cost to bring that cold hearted jerk into the world, I would say $1-6k depending on when they were born so by their logic no one should spend more than it cost to bring them into the world when it came time to save them.
My family today consists of my wife and our four children, they are all adopted. The first two were the last in their litter and were born from a stray that a nice family took in but could not keep all 8 kittens but were not willing to let them go to people who would not care enough about them (see first paragraph). Our next two kids were adopted at different times from our very yard, they were abandoned by uncaring individuals as often happens, animals are not to be dumped but typically are. One had some special needs and after many visits to our vet we were referred to a specialty clinic in our area. The had recently opened their new facility which is state of the art with a 24×7 ER Dept and a specialty clinic and they have an MRI and other “human” medical equipment that is equally used to save family members from certain death.
We needed to have blood work done to help narrow down what was causing her discomfort. My wife had taken her in on the day they discussed the blood work and she called me at work to discuss what our options are. Basically the facility understands everyone has limits as to what they can afford. The tests were going to run about $986, she asked what I wanted to do. I asked what tests were necessary to narrow it down, she told me all of them would help some were more critical than others. I said you know my mind on this and you didn’t need to call me, tell them to run all of the tests $1k to help diagnose our daughters health issues was worth it. We made follow up visits and in the end what we did has improved her quality of life. We don’t how old she is or how long we will have her but we will spend anything we can so long as it will give our children a quality of life.
Just recently when we adopted our newest daughter from our front yard we had to take her in for routine medical work, get her microchiped and fixed we then also had to take our oldest daughter in to get looked at, and we found she has kidney disease with a 25% reduction in kidney function. That week alone cost us over $1500, once again money well spent.
I have to say we met a older woman at the specialty clinic who was in were her 11 year old dog. He meant the world to her and she wanted to help no matter what, she had spent $14k to help him so long as he had a quality of life and in the end it would help him.
Everyday animals are born all over the US (and the world for that matter) that no one wants or cares about yet we will spend money we don’t have on toys that won’t last. I would say give to your local shelter, it tax deductible and you you will find it pays to give to those who cannot speak for themselves.
If you don’t know where to give give to http://www.aspca.org or http://www.hsus.org they certainly could use your support.
My wife and I are simply concerned pet owners who see our pets as our children.
I’ve worked at a veterinary clinic for 5 years and I saw all types of people, and I also have a cat of my own. People need to be prepared to accept the financial responsibility of having a pet, which is why I waited until I knew that I could pay for an emergency if it came up.
Outside of the emergencies and surgeries, people also need to factor in basic veterinary care. Pets should be examined once a year and have their vaccines, with heartworm medication (if necessary in the area) for dogs. Some people don’t think of these costs, but they are preventative and a good vet will be able to hopefully diagnose any problems early and the vaccines will help keep the animals safe.
As far as the decision whether to spend the money on the veterinary care, I think it’s a decision that is up to the owner’s. A veterinarian should explain all options, the likelihood of success of each of the options, and its effect on the animal. No veterinarian should push any treatment option on a person just to make money. If you don’t trust the veterinarian to have the animal’s best interests in mind, find another veterinarian as there are great ones out there.
I don’t have pets in my home, I have family: kid AND kitties. I spent several thousand dollars last year on two of my then 7-year-old cats. One ultimately died; the other is still alive, lying next to me in her “kittie chair” by the the computer desk. I’m not ashamed to say I spent every dime I had, and then some (the hospital even took post-dated checks). I don’t regret it. Even with my one kitty who ultimately died, she did have several extra months of a good life with her family and with her final illness it was basically something where they were going to have to do invasive testing and who knows what else, because even with all the testing that had been done, we still weren’t able to figure out what she had (they do think it was congestive heart failure, in the end). Near the end, I knew when it was time to say ‘no more’–it just wasn’t fair and her quality of living was going way, way down. Ironically, we have a cat who’s almost 16 and has never had any health issues.
I have had pretty rough luck with animals since moving out on my own. I adopted a cat who showed up on my doorstep one day. A year later she gets a cloudy eye, take her to the vet, she has feline leukemia and feline HIV. She is put on monthly immune booster shots, but every few months becomes so sick she can’t eat or walk. We take her in every time, nurse her back to health at a cost of 200-300$ each time.
The dog I adopted from a shelter meanwhile comes home with worms, then MANGE (the good kind because apparently there is a bad kind), then get something in his ear that causes him to flop his head all the time so much that it bursts a blood vessel in his ear which required surgery to repair and countless follow up visits to drain blood. That year, between my dog and my cat, I was at the vet’s every single week and started budgeting a few hundred every month because *something* was just bound to happen.
My cat finally reached a terminal stage, we did everything we could and it was the hardest decision that I didn’t want to make. My vet was amazing. She said she never recommends euthanizing if there’s something to be done, but that my cat was not going to ever get better and that she was suffering. So we held her while she was being put down.
Then my dog started having seizures. He has epilepsy and is on medication daily.
All in all, thousands of dollars… More than I’ve ever spent on my own health care. Vets, I feel, do prey ever so slightly on our attachment to our pets, but like other posters said, my pets bring my as much or more joy than pretty much anything else I can spend money on.
Of course, my vet is a regular at the Best Buy i manage and I always joke about wanting to take all *his* money.
When my cat is sick/injured, she comes to me. Most animals hide- she actually comes to me for help. And I’m going to give it to her.
I would not spend more than it would take to put him down.
My father spent over $5,000 trying to keep his/our dog alive after he was attacked by another dog.
I’d be more than happy to go into bankruptcy to keep my ferret alive assuming the causes for his illness weren’t natural.
I would have spent anything to keep my dog alive*. He got me through one of the hardest parts of my life. Alas, he never stood a chance because when we found the cancer it had metastasized to a point where they didn’t even know its origin.
*The reason I put the asterisk is that I am no fool and realize that sometimes, living won’t be worth it because of an extremely poor quality of life. In such cases, I think I would go with whatever was least painful to my dog, but, and I’m almost grateful for this, I never was forced to make a decision about that.
Unfortunately I have no answers for this. I know that I would be willing to spend some money. Right now I say that it would be limited, but if there were an emergency I am not sure what I would do. I don’t think I could ever justify 18 Grand though.
Also right now we have done anything in the form of saving for our pet in case of an emergency like this. Maybe one day we can have pet insurance or something like that.
I had to ask myself that when my cat got a near-fatal case of bladder stones. I spent $600ish, and am not sure I would’ve spent much more. He’s been very healthy ever since, but I wouldn’t have regretted it if I’d sentenced him to die. There are millions of healthy cats at the SPCA just as desperate for a good home as he was. It’s wrong to lavish too much money on a pet who’s at death’s door when others are standing by waiting to be adopted.
Really long post – sorry!
:::just returning from hugging all the bundles of fur in this house after reading these posts:::
I’m “mom” to Kona – an 11-year-old blind, deaf, often incontinent cocker; Buddy – a feral rescue Tabby cat; BamBam – son of Buddy with a sense of entitlement; and now as-yet unnamed black/white baby dwarf Netherlands bunny rescued from a gutter two weeks ago and is an absolute riot…
Hubby and I have spent several hundred $$ at varying times – the most recent expense was incurred by our Tabby, Buddy. We brought her along to our new house with her baby BamBam in tow, when we moved from our old apt. complex where feral colonies proliferated. This crazy little tabby would run out and greet me late at night when getting home from work, in the rain, and she’d be soo excited to see me that she’d hunch up like a little burr, and then drop to the ground and roll over on her back for a belly scratch. Yeah, she was a feral – had her first litter right on my patio (and we had a visit to the vet shortly after that when the babies were weaned and found homes for – and yeah, the vet gave us a great price break, and thanked us for being so caring!) There was no way I could ever just leave her. So shortly after our move, I could tell she wasn’t feeling well and made a vet appointment where it turned out she had hepatic lipidosis, and was very close to death. We agreed to try and save her over the next 24 hours, and if it looked hopeful, we’d go from there. We spent about $700 for IVs and medications and two nights in ICU.
That was nearly three years ago, and she hasn’t had any problems since, other than being loved to death with too much food, perhaps. And here she sits tonight, on the other side of the baby gate that separates her from the dwarf bunny. She still hasn’t quite shaken off her feral tendencies, and it makes me a little nervous to have them in close proximity – as Buddy used to gift us with ground squirrels and birds at least once a week on our doormat! And as for bunny, well, we’re $50 invested in vet expenses for this little creature so far…
Like some of the other posters have commented, I cannot put a price on the joy that these furry kids have brought into my life. I know they’re not people, but to this childless gal, they’re the best substitute I can think of. I’ll have to let each individual circumstance dictate my decision ~ but each pet I own will go toward that “rainbow bridge” with the very best quality of life I’ve been able to provide.
Another one here in support of pet insurance!
My folks are both financially stable (Both MDs…) and even though we figured that it’s cheaper to self-insure, a huge huge benefit is that you can truly make a decision about what’s best for the pet when he/she gets ill, without worrying about financial issues.
We signed up for insurance through VPI for our ferrets after one of them got sick and needed about $1,700 worth of surgery to remove some tumors – obviously the coverage wouldn’t kick in in time to help us in this case, but we figured that it’s good to have it for future instances. Zorro lived a long and normal life after the procedure, and our vet was nice enough to fudge a copy of the medical records so that the surgery fell after the 14 day waiting period for coverage to kick in
!
$13/month per ferret x 12 months/yr = $156… They cover 90% past the first $50, so we could have paid for insurance for 10 years (not taking interest into account, for simplicity sake) and still came out ahead vs. self-insuring. Since a ferret’s lifespan is 5-7 years, it’s a no brainer!
@RedwoodFlyer: I’m mixed here on the pet insurance.
I had it for several years for my cat; when I finally had to take him to the emergency vet, the bill was $460, they paid $80, and it took 6 months to get that.
This was VPI, the “leading” pet insurance provider.
The problem, I think, with pet insurance is that people think it’ll pay out anywhere near the whole amount. It won’t. If you look at VPI’s reimbursement schedule, it looks like something from 1972.
Since when has anyone got out of a vet’s office for under $100, unless you’re just getting nails clipped? I never used VPI for routine visits (I think that’s beyond the purpose of it), but on a $460 emergency visit is it anywhere near reasonable to reimburse me $40 for the visit and $40 for tests and bloodwork? In what decade?
After VPI paying less than 20% of my at-the-time largest vet bill, I dropped them.
Unfortunately, two years later, my cat developed lymphoma, and I’m currently treating him.
Personally, I don’t blink an eye at spending the money. This cat has kept my sanity at rough times in the past ten years and helped me get through some very trying moments.
If I can spend $2,500 on a digital camera or a laptop, I can spend $2,500 on my cat. Not everyone can afford that, I know, but if I can, and it means I have to go without a vacation this year, so be it. I feel I owe him at least as much.
Then again, there are plenty of people out there – even those who claim to be good pet owners and even animal lovers – who subscribe to the crazy “The dog cost me $100, so I won’t spend more than $100″ school of thought.
People like that should not be allowed to own pets; unfortunately, for lots of people, pets are just ornaments or random distractions that they get tired of after three weeks.
The oldest of our two dogs is 3 years old (the other is 2).
So far, in the 26 months since we adopted him, he’s:
* Eaten part of a bath towel – $3,500 for bowel surgery and recovery
* Contracted rocky mountain spotted fever twice – $2,500 (we religiously use Frontline, spray the yard with environmentally-friendly insecticide, and he probably spends a total of only 30-40mins in the backyard on a normal day)
* Been stung by a bee/wasp in the mouth – $500 (it was after 5pm on a Friday, so it meant a trip to the emergency vet, to make sure his airway didn’t swell shut)
Suffice it to say, after paying a lot out of pocket, we now have pet insurance for both.
* [www.petinsurance.com]
* [www.aspcapetinsurance.com]
* [www.hsus.org] (the one we chose)
@sharkd: The 2yo, of course, has never been sick a single day since we adopted him.
It’s a tough one for me. I love my pets, but I also love paying my rent. And I can’t much care for an ailing pet if I don’t have a house to live in! I’m thinking my limit would be about $300.
The rational part of my brain thinks that spending five grand on a single pet is a waste, and that it is better to instead make a donation for that amount in your pet’s name to the ASPCA or the local animal shelter where the cash will do the most good by helping lots of animals. (This is especially true if the animal is old(er) and is suffering.)
It’s unconscionable to spend $50,000 to clone a dead dog without considering how many homeless and unwanted strays that fifty thousand dollars would help.
That said, I would’ve spent that money (and much more) in a second if it’d saved my cat Spencer.
Our cat’s around 20 (we’ve had her 17 years and she wasn’t a kitten when she walked in) and have spent, in the last ten years, about £20 on flea stuff and that’s it. When she gets ill she’s for the chop.
Our other cat went down the tubes last year – over two day she went from very slender to having a fat pot belly. I took her to the vet who said that he could do lots of expensive tests to tell me what she was dying from, but that in his opinion none of them were likely to be cureable anyway so we put her to sleep.
A cat’s a cat – be nice to it while it’s alive but say goodbye when the time comes.
I have a cat that I love like a son, and I can’t imagine not spending “whatever it took” to preserve him. Of course, there are limits financially on “whatever it takes”. $3k? $5k? $7k? Maybe. But as folks here have already mentioned, there’d be a fine line between making myself feel better by keeping him around, and potentially prolonging his misery. If $10k would help him recover and he’d live a relatively pain free, normal live, then sure, yeah, I’d spend it.
One of my dogs had a pretty fucked up life. He got hit by a car right in front of my sisters and stepmom about a year after we got him, and had a broken back and 2 broken legs. We decided to get him the surgery, but it cost us several thousand dollars. You may think that’s a lot to spend on a dog, but we felt that he was our family member and our responsibility having rescued him from the pound, where he would have died. 15 years later, my stepmom and I took him to the same vet to have him put down, because he was too old to walk. Although it was probably the saddest moment of my life, I realize that with us he got a second chance and then even a third chance, and lived a wonderful life as one of the family. I’m pretty sure that my stepmom, the one who suffered the most monetary loss, agrees.
Eyebrows McGee, FYI, the subq supplies can be purchased from the people pharmacy as well; much cheaper than getting them from the vet.
(I guess this comment shows where I’m coming from in this discussion.)
I had to smile at this thread because it reminded me about an episode I had with a pet a few years ago — not a fuzzy pet, but a turtle. My brother had a turtle that he bought as a baby, and he had it in an inadequate tank setup, and it wasn’t thriving. (To be fair to my brother, he was going through a huge move/job change/etc. so it was not surprising he didn’t have a lot of energy to devote to a turtle).
Anyway, I was a bachelor with more time and money, and an apartment-dweller who couldn’t really have more pet-like pet, so took it home, set up a big tank with rocks and a heater and filtration and a light for basking and fed it regularly and all that and the thing grew _humongous_, from the size of a quarter to the size of a dinner plate. I had to upgrade the tank a couple of times.
I would occasionally check out turtles at pet stores and wound up adding two more turtles. I liked to pick out the runts and nurse them back to health. One had a soft shell, but I put a calcium supplement in his food and gave him a lot of time in the sun and it hardened up, although it never became totally normal. I became someone attached to them, actually. They were named “Giblet,” “Sluggo,” and “Commodore Bubba Poopypants” (don’t ask).
Anyway at one point Bubba had a weird growth on his foot, and I had to decide if I was going to put serious vet money into a turtle, a pet that you can’t really pet, won’t cuddle with you, and will in fact bite you if given a chance.
I opted instead to try a $3 antibiotic added to the tank water and whaddya know, it cleared up.
The turtles all died a couple of years later in a gruesome accident my young son had, involving a backed-up dishwasher and unattended kitchen sink with turtle food and turtles in it, but that’s another sad story. All three grew and were thriving and seemed to enjoy life so I don’t feel too horrible about the whole affair.
Sorry this story has gone on a bit long… what was the question again? : )
My cat was low maintenance and cost maybe $500 a year, if that. When she was 16, she had routine bloodwork that showed liver and kidney failure. I could put her old body through $1500 surgery and prolong her life to 9 months or I could let her die in peace and put her down for $150 (I think?). I made the decision to wait until she was showing any sign of pain and then I’d put her down. It took 5 weeks. Then a dog fell into my lap that I was not planning for. She was abused, neglected, and overall a mess, but I took her anyway. I’d say now I spend $300 on the annual vet visit and about $300 in food and bones through the year. If I add grooming (meaning a bath and brushing) that’s another $100-200 a year. I love my dog and I like her happy, healthy, and active.
I know my dog will need cataract surgery later on, but if it’s cheaper to just remove the eye, that’s the route I’ll go because she was born with this and doesn’t see much out of that eye now. It’s not going to effect her too much.
I have a price limit on her life though. My limit is around $3000 in a dire emergency because I know what I can afford and what I can’t. If the situation were life-threatening, I’d have to weigh out age of my dog plus the quality of life after treatment to decide if I would pay to fix or pay to put down. I think it’s selfish to keep an animal alive that is not going to have a good life after the procedure or with lifelong medication.
I think this is a decision that has to balance the love of your pet with your ability to afford the care. I understand the desire to spend your entire life savings to cure a pet. However, are we doing a service to the pets if we spend all your money to cure them and then have no money to feed ourselves, or the pet.
I had to make the unfortunate decision to put down our 9 year old cat. Although he was one of the most friendly, unique and loving cats we’ve ever known, his reoccurring health problems were getting to be too much. He was having urinary track blockages every year for the past 4 years and each time it was costing us $1200. We had him on the special (i.e. expensive) food that was suppose to prevent it and made sure he always had fresh water, but no mater what we did, he’d get blocked. When both my wife and I were working we didn’t mind the bills, it was worth it. Now that my wife has gone back to school we are down to one income and things are much tighter than they were. He got blocked up last night and we took him to the emergency vet where they handed us the estimate for $1200 again. We hated the fact that we were stuck between the love of our pet and the inability to pay. If we were to pay the bill, we’d have $0 in the bank. We spoke with the vet and asked if we fixed him this time then would he not get blocked again. The vet told us that this will be a reoccurring event regardless of what we do, it was just a matter of time before it happened again. Faced with this decision we felt we had not choice and put Mako down. Anyone who feels an ounce of love toward a pet please know that regardless of age, this is a gut-wrenching, heart-breaking decision.
Our concern was what would happen if we were away for a weekend and he got blocked. I didn’t want him to suffer for several days until his bladder explodes just because we weren’t around.