How much is too much to pay for your sick pet?
An article in Salon “What I wouldn’t do for my cat” inspired the following letters (editor’s pick) regarding medical treatment for your sick pet.
My cat = my new carpeting
Last year, my husband got a nice bonus from work. The same week our cat, Leo, ate a penny (yes, ate a penny, in front of our two kids). Turns out that is a very awful thing for a cat to do. He ended up with pancreatitis, mouth infections, ulcers, was in an emergency vet hospital for a week on IV’s, all sorts of treatments. And, he pulled through. My kids love that cat–but the treatment? Took the bonus–ALL of it–over $5,000. I joked that the cat ate my new carpeting, which is what I had intended to spend the $5,000.
Yes, we love him and I am glad to have him, but I still think we were crazy to spend that much money on a cat.
*****
It’s an easier path to go down than you would think!
One morning I noticed my normally very hungry, very active cat had become immobilized and wouldn’t eat so I brought him to the local vet. An xray ($300) revealed a huge sack of fluid crushing his lungs and was diagnosed as probable congestive heart failure. The vet quickly ushered me out the door to a passing taxi so I could bring him to the animal medical center on New York’s Upper East Side ($25 with tip). There they rushed him into emergency care at a speed that would be the envy of human hospitals anywhere. About 40 minutes later the very nice Dr. Thompson came out to explain that he actually had an invasive thoracic infection and they had already drained about a litre of puss out of his chest to relieve the pressure on his lungs.
The recommendation was that he go into intensive care ($300/day) where he would stay in an oxygen rich kennel with a chest drain in each lung cavity and interveneously administered antibiotics. Shell shocked by all that had happened, I made the snap decision to go for it. After all, he seemed perfectly healthy the day before so I guess I wasn’t ready to write the little bastard off yet.
I took him home 8 days later ($7000 when all blood tests and medications were added in) with instructions to keep him on oral antibiotics for the next 8 weeks ($120).
Well, that was two years ago and he has been perfectly healthy ever since, but I really questioned my sanity for spending all that money on a cat. Then one day my neighbor showed me his $7000 Cartier watch and I stopped feeling guilty.
*****
Ever lived on a farm?
I have. Animals die. Animals disappear. When I was a child we had eight cats, all living in the barn. I loved them all, but my father made it very clear to me that we could not afford vet visits for them. When they got sick or injured we did our best to make them better, but if we couldn’t, we put them out of their misery. It was an awful awful decision to make, but we did it because we had to.
Interestingly, as an adult I had to make the same decision about my father. That really put the whole cat thing into perspective. Animals are not people, and the same rules to not apply.
*****
Shop around
Unless I skimmed past it, no one has suggested talking to your vet before emergencies arise. (One reader did advise getting a second opinion.) If you already have a vet you trust, ask at the next annual exam, or sooner, his or her philosophy on expensive care. If you’re new to an area or to pet ownership — or you’ve never much felt comfortable with the doc you use — investigate prospective vets like you choose a new physician, starting with word-of-mouth of other pet owners, then interviewing the doc.
This just could be asking about cost of the more sophisticated procedures, but it should be more than that: Does your vet share your views about where “too-much” begins, what to do when the care may just be prolonging the animal’s suffering etc. A competent vet should be for eager this conversation before it’s dire. If the client and clinic agree generally, the client will bring the next pet to the same place for repeat business.
*****
I wish all vets were like large animal vets.
I used to have horses. Nice show horses. Horses that cost more than my car now. (A lot more, sigh.) When you have nice horses you make good friends with a good vet.
Our large animal vets were awesome. They were very practical. They realized that horses were valuable animals but also cost a lot to keep, and they always laid it on the line with absolutely no BS or sentimentality.
Oh, and I had the myriad vet problems too, let me tell you. I had the horse with lymphomas on his penis. I had the horse with a sinus infection so entrenched we had to drill a hole in his head so we could flush it with disinfectant. I went through a colic or two, and had a horse with crazy severe melanomas (almost all gray horses get them, but not this bad). I had a horse who got nerve damage so one side of her head so her face drooped. I attempted to breed that mare, and then had to deal with the ensuing uterine infection. And, of course, one horse or another would go lame from time to time. This was besides all the basic shots and tooth maintenance and regular weenie washes for the boys (yeah, you actually have to do that).
In all these situations, my large animal vets would lay out the options and their costs, the odds as best they saw them, and would objectively await a decision. No pressure. Hey, and they made barn calls.
Small animal vets always seem to treat me like an irrational, irresponsible creature who CANNOT BE TRUSTED TO HANDLE THE TRUTH. I’ve learned to go to the vet in my relatively poor neighborhood. They have much more of that sense of pragmatism I appreciate.
*****
Older generation veterinarian weighs in
We veterinarians of the older generation did not hesitate to offer a guilt-free option of euthanasia. In fact, I myself leaned that way when presented with a pet with a chronic, expensive condition or an expensive problem with a poor long term prognosis, especially if the owner’s family had needy children. This attitude been supplanted in the current generation by the model of animal physician, for whom only the most current and expensive diagnostics and treatment are even considered. Actually, many of the older therapies that cost less were quite effective.
That being said, in many cases we veterinarians are able to save animals we would have lost in the past. Our incomes remain far below comparable professions, some of which require less training and involve less heartache. Many of our new practitioners have staggering student debt. And I often say to those who complain about their vet bill that the same case management for a human would be many times that amount. I also remind people that they would easily spend that amount on car repair, and would be very glad that they had found a competent mechanic they could trust.
I truly feel terrible that my profession has somehow priced veterinary care out of the reach of the lower income population, but it seems the same thing has happened with human medicine.
*****
Great look at this
We had a cat on whom we spent $2200. The money was a problem - we were poor at the time - but worse, it didn’t work, and I still feel like we prolonged his suffering needlessly. I did feel like that vet pressured us into “fighting the good fight” (as he put it) and we subsequently switched vets.
*****
All part of the package
I have had many cats over the years, and now they have all gone the way of all fur. One cat had diabetes, requiring daily shots of insulin and attentiveness for almost five years. Another cat had cancer, a third, kidney damage, and a fourth died unexpectedly. I have loved all of them, but after the last two passed away, I felt not only grief, but also relief, as though a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. This is all part of what you sign up for when you adopt a pet, along with all the happy years.
I think you need to look at the pet’s needs in the following way: they are not objects, like carpeting or furniture or appliances; you have a responsibility to meet their health needs just as you have a responsibility to feed them. I would not prolong the life of an elderly pet at huge expense, but I would try to give it a chance, if the illness were not too severe.
Why adopt at all, if you can’t love them enough to keep them living?
*****
Make choices that are sensible for you and your family
A good veterinarian will tell you, in advance, the full cost of any testing or treatment, as well as the benefit of the procedure and the potential consequences of refraining from the treatment.
That said, $1,300 does not seem all that excessive in this day and age. I don’t know about your household, but we spend about $60.00 per month for cable television– something that is hardly necessary (and often far less entertaining than our pets). We drink wine with our pasta, instead of tap water, and routinely spend dollars on other non-esential items that, when added together, would certainly make a sizeable charitable donation to those less fortunate than we are.
Bringing a pet home entails both a financial and emotional investment. The cost of adopting a cat or dog from a shelter, or even paying a lot of money for a purebred andimal, is the least of the expenditures you will have over your pet’s life span.
Should you have spent the money on Ferdinand? Only you can answer that question. Decisions on how much to spend have to be made on a case by case basis, considering you, your pet, and your family. That said, I would never, ever feel I had to defend an expenditure that was withing my means and that would preserve the quality of life for a companion who, as Roger Caras said, is not my whole life, but who makes my life whole.
*****
Something to think about
I volunteered for years in a big liberal metro area humane society. One of the ones where all the animals go when all the no kill shelters are full, which they often are.
If you want to spend money on your cat, hey, it’s your money. I just want to inform everyone that on a weekly basis a truck comes to the humane society I used to work with and the dead cats, kittens and dogs are put in, driven off to be cremated before being dumped in a landfill as ash.
They are often perfectly young and healthy, especially the cats and kittens. There are just too many. Many more homeless cats than dogs, at least here.
So if you don’t want to spend so much money on a sick cat, you might let it be painlessly put to sleep and go buy a couple healthy cats so they don’t have to face the same fate.
*****
Family is family……
Of course my cat Oscar is part of my family. Now that I’m a widow with grown children who have long ago flown the nest, Oscar is the only living creature (read that “person”) who lives with me.
He’s beautiful, smart, gentle, loving, compassionate - one couldn’t ask for a better relative. So when he developed a hyper-thyroid condition I paid $2000 for his radioactive treatment and the obligatory 10 day stay in isolation in the cat hospital.
During Hurricane Katrina there were many pet owners who refused to be rescued without their pets. Lots of people thought those folks were crazy. Not I. I understood them completely, and I know that I could never abandon my Oscar where would be alone in a terrifying situation he couldn’t understand.
Of course there will be limits to the amount of money one could pay to save the life of a beloved feline or canine or avian relative — but nothing better points to the depth of feelings one has for a pet than the willingness of those people in New Orleans to risk their lives rather than desert their loved ones, even if those loved ones were “just furry creatures.”
*****
Fortune Smiled on Us
My wife, three kids and I have a 9 month-old dapple Dachshund named Fizzgig. One morning he was very lethargic and wouldn’t eat. Then he was vomiting throughout the day. He also wasn’t pooping.
We took him to an animal hospital and paid $300 for an X-ray, which revealed some kind of blockage in his stomach that none of us could identify. The attending vet wanted to do exploratory surgery that very day and remove whatever was in him for $3,300. This was a financially devastating expense for us because our finances are where about 90% of America’s are right now.
We told the vet that we wanted to take Fizzgig home and do some serious financial planning to figure out how we’d do this. We also wanted to see if we could get (for lack of a better term) a better deal from our regular vet. Needless to say, we both got a little bit of judgmentalism from the attending. She said, “Well if you want to do that that’s fine but he is suffering and the longer you wait, the more danger he’ll be in.” I could tell from the way she was looking at us that she didn’t approve.
The receptionist was a little more direct. “You’re taking him home?!” she asked with a thinly-veiled mix of disbelief and disgust. We said yes. She replied, “Okay,” in that tone of voice that is almost universally interpreted as, “You make me sick!”
We got home and started crunching numbers and pinching pennies. We hated to put money over our dog’s life but money also puts a roof over our heads -and it’s a modest roof, believe me.
Long story short, the next day we got approved for a credit card to pay for the operation and got everyone ready to go. About a half an hour before we were going to leave for the vet, Fizzgig pooped out a plastic marker cap and was back to his old self within minutes.
See the Subject line.
*****
Spent Five Figures…
…on one of my best friends in the entire world and would do it again in a heartbeat. How could I look into the Poof’s green eyes and say “Sorry Pal, you hit your dollar limit!” and still live with myself? A semester’s rent, carpet, don’t depend on you for food and shelter. Guess it depends on your priorities, huh?
*****
What an interesting article!
My girlfriend and I have had a long-term, half-joking, half-not conversation about something very similar. She owns a dog, which she loves. I think the dog is great, and I enjoy taking him out for a run, playing with him, buying him a treat from the local pet store, all the good stuff. However, I can’t say that I love him. I did not grow up with dogs, and I’ve never owned one in my adult life, so maybe I just don’t know. But I have a hard time thinking that having a dog (or a similarly care-intensive pet) is really “worthwhile” in the long run(this being the bone of contention between my partner and I).
I am a peaceful and happy person; I have a good (albeit lower-paying) job, I volunteer several hours a week at the local childrens’ hospital, I have a wonderful, beautiful, girlfriend and a close group of great friends. I feel that adopting a pet (and paying for all of the basic and contingency costs associated with it) would draw on my resources in a significant way, and perhaps not give that much back to me.
I think it’s great to have an animal sleeping in with you on a lazy Saturday, but I can’t really identify with all the family-type love that is expressed towards pets by many owners (including many here on these boards). An earlier poster mentioned that he or she spent a certain amount of money on luxuries instead of making larger charitable donations (which I think is legitimate and healthy, btw), and therefore could not justify not paying for treatment for an animal. Does it make me a terrible, inhumane person if I would choose to make larger charitable donations (which I feel is more “worthwhile” for all of society and myself personally) instead of assigning that money to a pet?
*****
Life x death = ?
I have spent $10,000 on one cat’s care — and, in the end, she died. But I loved her that much, and I had the kind of income that allowed such an expenditure. I don’t regret a penny of the money spent.
Currently, I don’t have that kind of income, and if either of my cats became that sick, I would have a hard decision to make. I would make it the same way I made the decision before, factoring in different elements of my life.
What is my total income? What percent of that income is disposable? (Fur coat or fur cat?) How big a part does this cat play in my life? Am I always away, in the office, traveling, or going out every night? Or am I always at home, and the cat is my constant companion — one whose loss would be keenly felt every hour of the day? How old is the cat? What is the likely outcome of the procedure? Am I a person who can say “I did the best I could within reason” and let it go, or will I brood over not having done enough, berating myself for not having spent just another $300? (Sometimes paying off credit card debt accrued in a good cause doesn’t feel at all bad.)
These are not easy questions to answer, but, to make a decision that one won’t regret, they need to be answered honestly.
*****
via Salon Related issues: Euthanasia: should animals and humans be treated differently? Economic euthanasia. Humane endpoints and Euthanasia.
Maureen Adams
February 11th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
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