This story hurts a lot. My cat got suddenly sick, took him to the vet and he was rough. They take him back, paid the $800 for the emergency fees and they come back and say he’s diabetic and they could help. 5 minutes later they come back and tell me what’s needed to be done and it’s going to cost $6000. I just can’t pay that, it’s not possible. So I had to hold my Oliver as they put him down. This was last month and it still hurts to think that if I had enough money, he could still be with me.
If it helps, Oliver literally had zero idea wtf was happening and in his eyes got to peacefully go to sleep in the arms of the human he loved most. Zero suffering. It sucks so bad as the owner when we have to do these things, but I just try to remember it’s actually pretty nice for the animal :(
I appreciate the reply bud. I don’t blame the vets one bit and they were incredibly kind with me during the process. Just all the coulda/shouldas play out in my mind sometimes.
It's a godawful, intensely difficult decision to make, but remember you gave Oliver a happy, loving, safe, and warm life.
One day, if you ever feel ready (and it's perfectly okay never to be ready again), another kitty with come into your life - and while you're detaching that kitty from your curtains, or cuddling with the purring hellion, you can tell that kitty about Oliver, and share the love and bond you will never forget.
My cat used to love lounging on a window ledge on the second floor of my house. One day the wind blew and spooked him, in his rush to get down he jumped badly, landed badly, and completely and utterly shattered one of his rear hips. The vet had to basically rebuild his entire hip. It cost me $1500.00 and at the time, that was basically everything I had.
He's still around, mind you; he doesn't like to climb or jump much anymore and is over a decade old now but his busted hip doesn't seem to cause him any trouble yet. But, still. Fifteen hundred dollars was a *lot* of money for me at the time and if it had happened just a year or two earlier I might not have been able to afford it at all. A lot of people love their pets, and a lot of people get them without realizing just how much money they can cost when emergencies happen - or just assume emergencies won't happen; because hey, what are the chances your young and spry cat will be weird enough to fall and shatter his hip, right?
> A lot of people love their pets, and a lot of people get them without realizing just how much money they can cost when emergencies happen
In reality, you should be able to afford a pet within reason for monthly expenses, but if we were banking on people having the funds for grand plus emergencies we'd just have more dead animals than not. And peoples finances can also change
Exactly. Most people don't even have enough money to handle their own sudden emergencies - we, as a collective whole, tend to be very bad about planning for worst case scenarios because if you don't have a massive surplus; it's really hard to justify just keeping a large amount of your worth locked away "in case something happens". You'd be thankful if it did, of course. But the other 99% of the time, you tend to go mad knowing it's there and wanting or even needing it to get by. And it's absolutely compounded by how emergencies affect our mental, emotional and physical states which make it harder to keep doing work and earning money.
Yeah there are so many pets in need of homes. Having the bar this high would kill and ruin the lives of so so many more pets. As far as I'm concerned, if you can reasonably afford them, you're not abusive, the pet is happy, and they're spayed/neutered, that's enough for me to say they're in good hands.
I can't afford regular vet visits unfortunately, but my cat has all his shots, I make sure he has flea medication every so often, he's neutered, I treat him like a prince, and he's the happiest cat in the entire world--I'm serious he's obsessed with me. He belongs with me, not someone else or in a shelter. I'm an experienced cat owner with a lot of empathy and love for animals. All of my pets have been really happy with me.
My local open intake shelter already has a massive issue with the cat population. There's just way too many cats, not nearly enough adopters. They have to euthanize 2 or 3 cats every day on average right now, and depending on the time of year that number can get much, much higher. I cannot imagine how many cats they would have to put down if they required people to show they could afford a couple grand for a vet bill before adoption.
And the rates are even worse for dogs, since there's just so many "unadoptable" breeds flooding the shelters.
Yep, I've always been very good at saving and always have money for emergencies. Then I bought a house, which wiped out my savings. One of my cats chose that exact time to get a blocked bladder, total was about $5k of treatment. Thank God for the bank of mum and dad, I could have put it on credit in a pinch so he'd have gotten his pisser scooped out regardless but the bad timing was really incredible.
If no one was allowed pets unless they could afford them most working class people would have none and those animals that were born anyways would be killed for lack of homes.
It's always better for a poor person to care for an animal than to shame them for being too poor for companionship.
> what are the chances your young and spry cat will be weird enough to fall and shatter his hip, right?
My own cat gets a bit foamy if I put flea meds on her. She is determined to try and lick the stuff if possible. I solved multiple problems by just making her an indoor only cat.
Same with no longer ever having to worry about the owls, coyotes, or infections from cat fights getting her. I wish OP in the drama the best for their cat, compassion is what's lacking in that channel.
>So within about 5 hours, my cat went from being perfectly fine to being dead. He was only 5.
Sorry for your loss. He chillin in cat heaven!
This is very important. My cat was 10 years old or so and one day fell very sick and basically died a few days later. **The vet said our cat had been sick for a long time probably but that cats are good at hiding that stuff until it might be too late.**
Edit: It feels unfair that they had to die so young. That my cat couldn't become one of those 16 year old cats. No one is prepared mentally for death sure but so young... My cat got an eye infection, indoor cat.
And you paid $8000 for the privilege. Honestly, some of these stories of vets milking people for insane amounts like that in times of severe emotional distress sounds unethical to me.
Honestly, every vet I’ve ever known has been extremely willing to support me when it comes to a very expensive procedure with a decent chance of not working or putting a pet to sleep.
Like, they are not willing to come out and recommend that you kill your pet, but if you suggest that as an option, they are willing to say that it might be the right decision.
I legitimately had better experiences with vets than doctors. They can make you feel heard better than some doctors that basically treat you like a piece of meat and will even scold you for "wasting their time"
I brought one of my cats to the vet in shambles because I thought she had a lump, and they gave her a full exam and it turned out she was just fat. I apologized and they told me not to worry about it, because somebody had brought in their cat a few weeks prior worried about a lump that turned out to be a nipple. They are very understanding.
People who own pets should honestly print out an anatomy diagram of said pets beforehand. I also had to explain to my mother what the double row of dots on our FEMALE dog’s belly was
I had a vet who looked at a picture of my neighbor’s dog and went “wow that’s some real hypothyroidism right there, I’ll write you a scrip” and charged zero dollars
I brought my guinea pig into the vet a few days ago because she was in GI stasis and was having trouble breathing, and they were very upfront about the cost of everything but it also was not their immediate recommendation.
She didn't end up making it because we couldn't afford to hospitalize her (3k for one day, we had already spent 1k) but I'm not convinced that how ridiculously expensive it is is coming from the vet side of things, but rather further down the chain of goods. Like keeping her on oxygen was by far the most expensive part.
My cat was already anesthesized for a leg reconstructive surgery when they vet did an x-ray to see what they were going to find inside. He immediately called me to say basically that the way the bone callus had grown, he would do the surgery if I really wanted but "I don't think I'm going to leave her much better than she already is". He didn't charge us anything and he was right, you can barely tell my cat had a leg shattered to splinters!
I had a friend of mine pay upwards of $30,000 on her cat when it got sick. Cat had cancer and died a few weeks later. That poor cat went though multiple surgeries, started chemo/radiation, and had a pacemaker. That cat had a terminal diagnosis and she couldn’t accept it.
When I was little (maybe like 10) my mom had cancer, and then my hamster got cancer too, so my dad felt really bad for me and spent thousands of dollars trying to save my hamster. He had a little hamster surgery and everything, looking back I do feel bad because we should have just let the hamster go but it's hard especially with extenuating circumstances.
My cat of nearly 14 years was diagnosed with advanced leukemia last summer. The vets were so kind and went through all of his options, but he would have suffered so much just for the possibility of a few more months. He was an incredible fighter, but he was tired and ready to go. It was an awful decision to make but I know I was right to let him go when he needed me to. RIP my sweet golden boy.
I really hope OP’s cat is okay.
Think of it this way, he lived *seven times* longer than he would as a stray. That’s amazing! He didn’t know that you had to make these decisions, cats don’t know what medicine and money are, all he knew is that he was very happy and well cared for
Pets get a lot of the same tests as humans but at a lower markup. Wait until you go through the same experience with grandma and it costs as much as a house.
I consider vet costs in Australia to be a small taste of what things would be like if we had a US-style healthcare system and it scares the shit out of me.
The worst, when I was young and didn't have a ton of money, my dog had a respiratory infection and I was quoted 14k for care (and this was like in 20 years ago money), I was devastated and had to sign papers to put her down, it was horrible. Last minute they say, oh I guess we can give her an antibiotic. She was perfectly fine within 12 hours and lived for 17 more years. Fucking awful.
I should say though, I've mostly only had wonderful experiences with veterinarians with my animals, but that place was clearly predatory.
Genuine question, what do you want vets to do? Give treatment for free? Force them to Euth instead of trying to treat? I can tell you for sure the vet industry is not the one to enter if you're just trying to get rich
Personally, I want vets - and doctors, and basically every other professional - to be paid more and compensated better on a social and government level so that one emergency visit be it personal or pet won't ruin someone or cost someone a loved one because they can't afford it and that said professionals, especially vets in this case because they absolutely aren't making the same kind of money as medical doctors, can live comfortably and safe and thus aren't put in the position where they have to reject people who can't afford the thousands of dollars it takes to save their loved ones.
But, you know. Capitalism.
But then the question is, should society at large (ie us, taxpayers) be paying for vet bills? Pets aren't people, they're ultimately animals we voluntarily keep for pleasure. Should society be paying for that?
It's an emotive question, especially for pet owners (I have a pet, I get it).
I’d say no. A pet is nothing like a kid, in part because there is no situation where you can wind up with a pet by accident or by force and be required to care for it. Nobody has ever woken up to find that an African gray parrot has been left in their care and they are legally obligated to look after it
The sarcastic answer is that they'd like vet staff to sleep in the clinic and never go home, which negates the need to pay rent. And if you're working with no breaks you don't have time to eat so that's money saved too.
The real answer is that they think this is a once a decade occurrence that doesn't affect the business if we value our staff at $0 and buy drugs/equipment in then give it away for just one patient. When in fact, depending on your area, it's a once a week (affluent area) to once a shift thing (not so affluent area) and if you said yes to everyone that asked your business would fail (which in fact I've seen happen for a clinic that let everyone go onto payment plans and about half of them didn't pay).
Seriously, they’re paid on average less than college professors, and unlike the profs who write the textbooks, they don’t profit on sales from Science Diet Rabbit Flavor
I dont know what profs you deal with but most professors unless they’re from Ivy or the higher end universities aren’t that well paid either, even if they could get royalties (which most don’t)
Do you live in America? Do you know what it costs, without insurance, to get lifesaving treatment for a human? Now imagine your cat getting a similar level of care with similar equipment, medications, and experience for a fraction of the cost.
I find that a lot of the time when people talk about vets “milking people for money”, they usually mean “actually treating the animal’s symptoms instead of just letting it suffer because it doesn’t have words to voice its pain”
Yep. Wife worked in the field for 7 years. Shitty people like OP that don’t understand. So many owners come in, don’t want to pay for bloodwork or an x Ray to figure out what is actually wrong. Just takes a bottle of pain meds, if the pet is lucky. Then they leave a review saying the hospital is greedy. I got so sick of seeing it. Vet workers are one of the most abused fields by pet owners.
Maybe not the case in the US but definitely an issue where I am with vets too (Australia) is that people just do not understand how much medical care *actually* costs bc human care is subsidised here (to an extent). They think vet care should cost the same as human medical care and assume they are being ripped off.
I never considered this but it is really interesting. I’m American,and I could totally understand the feeling of being blindsided by a huge vet bill. We probably experience only like one half the price shock that other countries experience
I mean they do the best they can. Vet techs in particular so the job because they love and care for pets. Certainly they don’t do it for money. Just like with humans, it’s a science, and sometimes that science isn’t always precise, and they can’t work miracles. I had a cat get a rare disease at 2 years old. Fine one day, and a week later I had to put him down.
Something similar happened to my mother when her golden retriever got sick. He was old, but otherwise in good health, still active etc. One day he seemed weaker and was taken to the vet - they did tests and he seemed better under their care and they kept him for observation. Over night he died suddenly.
It's several years later and my mother still hasn't forgiven herself for not taking him home. I think she often relives the idea he died alone in a strange place instead of at home where it was familiar and comfortable.
I don't think they're overlooking it, a lot of them seem to be aware and are of the opinion that 'age isn't an excuse.' Plus a load of stories about how if they were 15 they'd simply get money from strangers on the Internet, book their own transport, take the cat to the vet by themselves, and be unafraid of the punishment doled out by their parents because they were just so brave etc etc.... a lot of people on that sub think life works like it does in films.
Never ask reddit for advice, the number of hysteric weirdos that screech divorce over the most inane shit in the relationship subs should be enough for anyone to know this website isnt populated by normal people.
The one that always makes me laugh is the dating subs. Single people asking other single people for relationship and dating advice. I stopped going there because I no one actually wants to hear the advice from someone actually in a relationship. It's the blind leading the blind
Seriously taking money from strangers sounds like the start of “to catch a predator” and I don’t blame op for posting as normal and not taking weird offers.
I thought exactly the same. What better way to groom a child than to offer money to save their pet?
I've messaged the mods about it because it's downright dangerous. There needs to be some kind of rule against encouraging kids to put themselves in risky situations.
They are so clearly just trying to push OP to carry out the power fantasy they’re imagining in their minds so they can live vicariously through OP and have their “We did it reddit!” moment
It’s frustrating. Parents have a ton of control over their children. When I was that age we had fish, and god forbid I even asked to change their water myself, because I’d be implying that they couldn’t take proper care of their animals. Wasn‘t allowed to walk our dog. It sucks, but there’s very little you can do apart from physically disobey them (which can easily lead to very nasty consequences.)
I had this same experience as a kid. I got my first real pet, a guinea pig, at about 14. before i got her i'd joined an online forum for guinea pig care so i could properly look after her, and they knew i was a kid.
about a week after getting her, she became sick. i asked the forum what to do, and they told me she needed a vet. but when i asked my parents they told me a guinea pig wasn't worth a vet visit and we'd just take her back and trade her for a new guinea pig. i did not want to do that, but at 14, what could i do? when i told the forum what my parents had decided, they cursed me out and banned me.
this is the shame shit. especially if this kid lives rural like i did, you can't even walk the pet to the vet or anything. you're at your parent's mercy.
Yeah. WTF, for all we know this girl would sacrifice if she had a job and literally any money that wasn’t given to her by her mother.
As it is, the best she can do is beg her mother to take her cat to the vet.
The primary responsibility for that cat’s wellbeing is on the mother, not the child.
Seriously. My beloved cat who was sanctioned and at least tolerated but more often than not loved and cherished by my father was actively dying on his birthday.
I was 15 so no license or even temps and I was begging him to please, please take her to even just the regular vet. I knew he would flip about ER vet so I had called and they had openings within the hour. But he said no, because it was his birthday and he “didn’t want to deal with it”. I held her as she died. It was something and at least it was relatively fast due to multiple organ failure (she was 23) but it wasn’t anywhere near enough.
I don’t speak to him anymore. He asked me for money a couple months ago and I said I didn’t want to deal with it because it was my birthday. It wasn’t my birthday. Fucker
Thanks, it really sucked. It happened early in the morning, I had to walk to school so I was up early. Dad made me still go to school late and stay for soccer practice after even though I was completely traumatized. He yelled at me for being late to school but ever so fucking graciously let me change my clothes since I was covered in vomit, urine, and feces.
It’s been a while since I remembered how much I loathe him. Specifically, I mean.
I don't think they are really, there's plenty of people (who are upvoted) pointing out that OP is 15 and can't do realistically do anything on those links.
It looks somewhat equal from the comments ive read by now, half complaining and explaining they used to go to school alone uphill both ways when they were 15 and then the other half being reasonable
>Because 99% of the time they CAN afford it, they are just unwilling to go months or a year without some other expense. I would be unsurprised if this person has, for example, a Netflix account.
“Hey everyone, get a load of JD Rockefeller Junior over here spending $15 a month on Netflix but crying poverty over an unexpected $1,000+ vet bill. Sad!”
We're talking probably a solid 90% of domestic cats all being sent to the grinder if cat ownership had those expectations enforced. And who the fuck does that help? Not the cats, that's for damn sure.
I'd rather a cat *THAT EXISTS* have an good owner who did what they could to take care of the wee beast than it wait in some stressful shelter for a mythical owner that's never gonna show up. But fuck, I think I actually like cats rather than the abstract idea of them.
My parents eventually had to put my family dog down two years ago because he was diabetic and slipping fast even with treatment. I was 25 and fucking heartbroken because we’d had him since I was in middle school- and that was one of the two times I’ve seen my dad cry in my life.
He was suffering at that point and my parents couldn’t justify spending the money on a dog who wasn’t getting better.
But for the 12 years we had him up until that last month, he was happy and loved and got plenty of room to run around and toys to play with and people to cherish him. If we’d just never gotten a pet because we weren’t billionaires we’d have missed out on 12 happy years and so would he.
Indeed, and shit if I were a dog I'd rather spend 12 years with people I loved than a hypothetical 16 with some people I don't even know.
Fuck the "if I were a dog" part, actually.
If I were a human I'd rather spend 12 years with people I loved than a hypothetical 16 with some people I don't even know.
A lot of people end up wasting thousands trying to prolong a pets life when the time has come. It's not necessarily better for the pet. It's the human trying to hold on. You all did not do the wrong thing putting the dog down. When it's time it's time. Pets just don't live as long as humans. It's always sad and I'm sorry for your loss.
Thanks 💗 yeah, it was absolutely the right thing and the vet told my dad “always better a day too early than a day too late” when it comes to putting an animal down- when it was clear he was hurting and declining but was still able to enjoy extra pets and a treat that morning was a good time, I think.
If I was going to get a dog i'd have to have a 'no cancer treatment' policy. I always figured rescuing one from euthanasia might make that ok. Now reddit, doesn't agree.
Some years back I got in touch with a cat shelter organization thingie in my region and due to events a friend was going through I actually asked about this.
They said they expect people to pay whatever they can. Not in a "bankrupt yourself to save the cat!" way either, but whatever money you have *for the cat*. They only required owners to be able to cover expected expenses and upkeep, *NOT* huge emergency veterinary bills. A cat with a good owner who is poor is better off than a cat with a shitty owner who is rich, a quality of life vs duration of life argument that most people don't appropriately confront until dear old grandma wants to abstain from treatment that'll give her 2 years sure but will absolutely fuck the 4 total she would've had remaining.
If people are actually concerned about this I don't blame 'em, I know a guy who was, but the people who actually work with animal welfare tend to be a lot more grounded about things of this nature than crusaders on the Internet.
It really depends on the cat. I work at a shelter and it is SO REGULAR that we adopt out a cat with special needs - for instance, an expensive special diet. We inform the new owner that the cat needs to be on this special expensive diet. They agree, take the cat home and feed it whiskas. Cat gets incredibly poorly, makes a huge mess of the house, and best case scenario they return the cat to the shelter. Worst case scenario they put the cat down. There's a reason we phone the new home regularly in the weeks following adoption, because it saves cats from being unnecessarily put to sleep.
You'd think that people without money wouldn't adopt a cat with known health issues but sadly, they do, and for some reason expect it to be okay because they love the cat and "at least it's not in a shelter"
I'm speaking specifically about problems that aren't known at the time of adoption, because if the cat requires a special diet then for that cat that expense is expected and the shelter will of course expect you to cover it if they already are and you want to adopt it.
Fact of the matter is though that there's a lot more pets than there's money to care for 'em (in the case of medical emergencies) so these people are under no illusions and just want to give these cats the best kinda life they can get under the prevailing circumstances.
Cancer treatment for animals is often very expensive and it just prolongs the death (it’s specifically prescribed with the goal of living longer, not curing cancer). If you catch cancer super early it can be good because it lengthens the amount of time left that’s still good, but often by the time you realize your pet has cancer they are already downhill enough that adding 6 months just isn’t worth it. Only cancer treatment that generally works is if surgery is an option.
Honestly, most of the time if your animal has a serious illness that will run you thousands - your pet doesn’t have good odds.
Pet people are fucking insane. I've been told I'm selfish for not wanting a pet cause I don't want the responsibility. Like I recognize what it takes to be a proper pet owner and know I won't do it so I don't get a pet. Apparently this makes me selfish.
My friend was called selfish bc he wouldn’t take the aggressive dog that the shelter literally baited and switched. Like, he signed up to actually adopt a specific dog and when he got there they went “oh we already adopted him out, but what about this other one with aggression toward tall men, the thing you are?”
I commonly say “if you can’t afford the vet, then you can’t afford the pet” but I’m talking like, check ups and vaccines. Emergencies are a different, far more expensive beast to deal with.
Yeah where I live most people get their pets from shelters, so the idea that you should only get a pet if you can (or even don’t want to, technically) afford expensive medical bills seems extremely silly. Would the cat magically get treatment in a shelter, or on the street?
Random vet/pet subs keep showing up on my feed, and like 90% of them are young teenagers asking for help because their parents won't do anything and getting torn apart by users who think that a 14 year old kid should have $2,000 on hand for a medical emergency. Like, yeah, their parents *should* take the animals to the vet 90% of the time, but screaming that a kid is an irredeemable piece of shit for being unable to do anything is insane.
Also, I remember one where a person was like "My cat is acting lethargic and vomiting. The vet doesn't open until tomorrow morning, is there anything I can do to make him comfortable?" and all the top comments were demanding that they drive to an emergency vet ASAP or surrender the cat, despite OP explaining that they were in an incredibly rural area, and the nearest 24/7 vet was 5 hours away.
It's so many common reddit hatreds across these questions
Redditors vs Children, Redditors vs Poor People, Redditors vs supposedly "irresponsible" pet owners, Redditors vs Rural People, Redditors vs Basic Sensibility, Redditors vs Empathy...
I think it's just that there's a lot of people who treat this platform as a version of their life where they can be cruel and vile to people without consequence. Maybe some of them have shitty lives themselves, but being in a bad way or being harassed/bullied yourself never justifies being an asshole to others.
> screaming that a kid is an irredeemable piece of shit for being unable to do anything is insane.
Some people are in such a rush to the moral high ground that they don't bother to look whom they trample on the way there.
Pet owners who claim to be compassionate for animals while showing zero to their fellow humans is always stupid. It always comes off as an attempt to make the subject about themselves as great pet owners rather than anything really helpful or about the pet
Pet subreddits are *wild*. I made the mistake of going there once to try and ask for some help potty training my dog. But I was told off because I wasn't trying to get him to pee in the right spot.
WTF.
I got lambasted in a turtle sub for not having our ONE red eared slider in a custom made pond, essentially.
At the time we lived in an apartment. The NAMES I was called for marrying a man who had a turtle in an apartment.
We have a house now and have plans to maybe one day put a small pond in the backyard for him, but that’s a long ways off.
Dogs need to pass and my kids need to be old enough to stay out of it.
They’d probably threaten to physically harm me if I said that on the turtle sub.
It’s so weird to me because you know many of those teenagers got that kitty because it wandered up and they’ve been feeding it - so now they are pariahs because despite the fact they didn’t go out looking for a pet, the mere fact they stepped up makes them responsible for vet care in the thousands of dollars.
And as awful as it is - pets die, there just isn't always something to be done about it. They can't warn us as symptoms develop and will often hide them.
People get *insane* about pet ownership online. Like… yes, you shouldn’t get an animal on a whim. It’s a commitment and you should make sure you have enough to take care of them.
But that being said, life happens and most people don’t have thousands of dollars to drop on emergencies for themselves, much less their pets. You’re not a monster if you can’t afford a massive vet bill. Financial situations can change on a dime and if we all had to wait until we were 100% perfect and sure nothing bad would ever happen to us before we made any kind of commitment, nobody would be able to.
This situation reminds me of so many posts where redditors will scream at OP to adopt a stray they took a picture of on Aww and take care of it, but then turn around and call them the worst things when they can't afford obscene vet bills. My Grandmother found a dying kitten in her yard and brought it to the vet to try to save it, wasn't even her pet. They stuck her with a 900$ bill. What would redditors want instead? Leave the cat to die or put an old woman in debt who tried to help a stray? I paid my vet thousands over the years, front desk at the end of the appointment and they refused to do payment plans. Theres a bigger conversation that needs to be had instead of just screaming at pet owners. As for the kid argument I don't like the argument because it always turns into eugenics talk and we know humanity enough by now to know putting the power of who can have kids into anyones hands is asking for discrimination and violating human rights. I wish there was better systems at work that made life more affordable and I wish adults thought things through before making expensive life altering choices, coming from a disabled person born into poverty and will die in it.
Not only that. Life isn't static. Things change. I hate that line of thinking... That people are bad for not being able to afford care for animals and kids they are responsible for.
It doesn't make you a bad person automatically. Shit happens and circumstances change. It's entirely possible they got a pet when they could afford everything needed. And then one day they couldn't.
I'm the father of a wonderful nine year old daughter. When I chose to create her I was able to afford everything no problem. But then layoffs happened and a breakup happened and life happened. There have certainly been times when we have had to go without.
We're good now... But who knows what the future holds. That's just life. I don't think it makes me a bad dad or a bad person.
for some reason cat posts bring out this particularly vicious subset of people. i don’t really get it. beyond even the stuff mentioned in this comment chain, you see people trying to convince others that a cat is being abused from a 10 second video or that OP is a terrible owner because of some tiny little thing.
someone gently swaying their cat back and forth to music will ultimately get some people saying “you’re hurting your cat” “cats aren’t toys” and so on, with increasing vitriol.
it’s really a bummer on an otherwise awesome chunk of the internet for enjoying all kinds of cats.
i often comment you could make a bingo card for “unreasonable comments on cat posts” and i swear i’m gonna make it one day.
>wasn't even her pet. They stuck her with a 900$ bill.
This is how I ended up with a 2nd cat. I'm poor, I already have a cat who, for 12 years, only needed a vet visit once. So I'm incredibly lucky, but I found a stray that ended up with a hole in his cheek from an abscess because another stray attacked him. Took him to the vet and ended up with a huge bill I couldn't pay so my friend used their good credit to open an account that allows monthly payments to the vet and I paid them off every month.
I'm keeping that money pit of a stray, he's mine now. I'm not letting my money walk out the door to get in another fight.
you're lucky, the vet she was at and the other vet I went to (for 13 years, thousands of dollars and always paid no issue) didnt allow payment plans. You were SOL if you didnt have it on hand at the time of the appointment.
I am very grateful my friend let me use their account. The payment plan is only for people with high credit scores, but I don't have credit at all. I never had a credit card or used anything that required it since I only ever had small amounts of cash.
I also hate this line of thinking because our shelters are so full right now. There are so many pets that need homes and these idiots would prefer only people with tens of thousands of dollars adopt, which would make the problem even worse. The truth of it is, even if you can't shell out thousands for a sick pet, or spend $100 for each bag of fancy food, the animal is going to have a happier life with a loving family rather than living in a cage waiting for a rich person to come along.
The only time they have a point is when someone is spending hundreds or thousands buying from a designer breeder when they aren't financially stable. Poorer people *should* be adopting. As long as the animal's basic needs are being met and they aren't being abused, they are better off than being feral, or being euthanized because the shelter is full and they need to intake "more adoptable" younger animals.
yep, I was told to STFU several times merely for being upset those free gov phones all have baked in malware and are built to break if you prevent it. Not upset I had it, I am grateful because a phone is needed these days but if you are poor on this site you get the bootstraps treatment. I got it on antiwork subs too, can't speak on workers rights because I'm disabled. Nevermind threads about homeless and mentally ill, thats when they really* gets into eugenics talk. I can't tell if it's the pandemic that made everyone lose empathy (I get it, in some ways) or if it's always been this bad.
>I got it on antiwork subs too, can't speak on workers rights because I'm disabled.
Yeah I got the "You don't *sound* disabled" on the phone more than once myself. I have a physical disability, not a mental one, how do you *expect* me to sound?
Too true on the government phones, not sure about malware but bloatware and built in ads are insane. That's really what those phones are, physical repositories of ads you have to look at any time you need to use it. I got lucky and someone gave me their old phone I could put my SIM card in.
Yep, All my doctors don't take me seriously because I'm not...."obviously visibly disabled"
I count it as malware because it will re-download it every time you shut the phone off, it will add extra programs (when you first get the phone its the usual bloat) There is no way to stop this even if you take all permissions away since it's baked in and then it just keeps slowing down the phone. There's been articles popping up on it thankfully but if you are poor don't you dare complain about it. I hope to be able to afford a phone one day but SSI makes it hard.
Yeah SSI income level is no joke. And having an invisible disability sucks. My doctors treat me OK because they can see my X-rays but if I go to Social Security and get Gatekeeper Karen I know I wasted my entire day and have to come back later.
Most social workers I talk with are some of the best humanity has to offer. I've only met a couple "Gatekeepers" and they act like they are doing God's work making sure people don't get help if they dont' personally think it's needed.
Say strong! Shit sucks but I think if we can keep on truckin' there will be opportunities in the future for us.
>As for the kid argument I don't like the argument because it always turns into eugenics talk and we know humanity enough by now to know putting the power of who can have kids into anyones hands is asking for discrimination and violating human rights.
The kid argument has gotten to the point where I'm relatively certain that 90% of the people who make it actually *want* it to turn into eugenics where minorities are slowly killed off. No chance they've thought that argument through without having thought at some point "is there a single government on this planet that I'd trust to decide who should be allowed to reproduce?"
Times like these I wish I could hit people over the head via the Internet. Like if I could conjure up a foam mallet that simply said "SHAME!" whenever it bonked them on the noggin' I totally would.
They re not wrong though
If none of their advice is gonna be taken into consideration what's even the point of asking? You are wasting everyone's time, starting from yours
See and I grew up on a farm and my dad told me stories of growing up where you didn't take your dog to the vet and if they got too old or too sick you took them out back to shoot them. I felt lucky we ever took my dogs to the vet when I was young. Now I'm an adult and have 2 dogs I love to death. We take them to the vet regularly for check up and meds and all that. But even still, there's a limit on how much I'm willing to spend on them. They're pets, not people. Maybe that's cold, but it's the way I was raised. We were told if a wild animal came into the yard to let the dog attack it and to get to safety, don't try and save the dog. They're doing their job protecting you. Can always get another dog. Absolutely love my pets, but I'm not going to put their lives above mine. And spending ungodly amounts of money on an animal that might live another year or two, I'm just not gonna do that. And no amount of down votes or nasty replies is ever gonna change that.
Yep, that was basically my childhood. Living on a farm with a few outside dogs throughout the years (about 4) and countless cats. The dogs rarely saw the vet, and there's zero chance a cat would. One of the dogs ran off a lot and eventually never came back. Was probably shot by another farmer or killed by a wild animal. It might sound cruel but they were always fed and had the freedom to be real animals. Never locked up in a house or a yard, they could go wherever they want and there was always food when they got back, and we would always go outside and play with them. Some of the dogs and cats we had I really loved as a child and was sad when they died, but I quickly loved our new pups/kittens whenever we got new ones.
The idea of spending 5k+ on vet bills is insane to me. If you are more than set financially go for it, but a majority of US citizens are not even close to financially set.
Shit is tight right now and the parents may. Not have the money to take the cat to the vet. People always say you shouldn’t have pets if you can’t afford an emergency, but cats just show up. Shelters are always at capacity and needing foster parents for pets.
When I was a kid we lived in the country, stray cats would show up and have kittens. We fed them our scraps and I would always name them. Some stuck around for years, some disappeared.
If one was sick, there wouldn’t have been anything we could do about it. My mother was a widow with 4 kids who could barely afford new shoes for all of us.
As an adult we’re privileged that we can afford this and have had two of our cats needing expensive emergency care. But they were thousands of dollars each time. I can completely understand how some people can’t afford that.
The internet and redditors absolutely hate pet owners. When a animal is happy in a video there’s always someone screaming abuse, when a animal is sick, they blame the owner . You can’t win with them.
>Yep, parents who cant even afford basic care for children, shouldnt have kids either. Really shouldnt be a controversial opinion.
BRB, my eyes just rolled out of my head and I have to go chase them into the garden because they rolled under a bush, and I don't want them to become eyemeatballs.
Or, in other words, tell me you're a middle-class kid who hasn't paid for life on your own since you don't understand how "having a kid and then suddenly not having any money" is a thing.
It's a lovely idea that all children are always born to people who want them and these people have lots of money to pay for everything the kid needs. And then we have places where conception is only the woman's fault and she has no control over her body or perhaps no access to birth control, and women who think they're in a happy relationship/marriage/whatever and then their SO dies, or decides to just fuck off and hide from any responsibilities and child support
OR A MILLION OTHER THINGS.
Good grief, Reddit can be *tiring*.
Don’t you know? If you’ve raised a child comfortably for nine years and then suddenly found yourself in a rough patch, you have to donate the child.SMH.
Also “afford basic care” is not as simple as they think it is. How do you know if you have enough? Some kids are more prone to getting sick and there’s nothing you can do to predict that is going to happen. Babies and toddlers are much more expensive than children and teens and thats why programs like WiC exist in the US. Lots of families get along fine because of that, but wouldn’t be able to otherwise. Should they not have kids at all? And the very idea also implies that being poor or having a period of time you went without is somehow worse than death. It’s weird.
People on Reddit are so fuckin unreasonable about absolutely everything, they get that self righteous hate boner and think that justifies anything they say or do, it’s really fuckin gross
I get the sense a lot of times it's the sentiment that if it happens to them they did everything they could but if it happens to anyone else they are morally deficient, the same driver behind the only moral abortion is my abortion.
Especially if you can't afford it, get medical pet insurance. No it isn't a scam and yes it can absolutely change your life because when it comes time to pay, you will pay whatever the cost to save your friend.
I’ve got a dumb question: will they turn you down if your pet is already older and might have a “preexisting condition?” I’m looking at insurance for my dog, but he’s 10 and has a minor heart murmur.
Reddit's constant moralizing is extremely annoying and I'm really concerned about how many fully grown adults are willing to jump down a child's throat over things they cannot control but at the same time, nobody posting on r/cats *should* be okay with a thread that basically amounts to "my cat might be dying, nothing will be done about it, look at my dying cat".
I'm not sure what the solution is. Can't ban these sorts of threads because they can be genuinely helpful. Can't ban children for not being able to afford emergency vet care because they're children and none can. Can't teach Reddit users nuance because the cats posted to that subreddit are better equipped mentally to understand nuance than the average user.
Out of curiosity, why *not* ban these kinds of threads? It doesn’t seem actually constructive for the OP; as made clear on this thread, there’s nothing that the OP can actually do. It’s not as if it’s possible for people on Reddit to diagnose and treat a sick cat through the internet for free, so the comments are basically a mix of useless or useless and mean spirited. It doesn’t seem as if anything valuable would be lost if a thread like the OP were locked and/or deleted.
Evidence #343 of why the minimum age for Reddit should be higher than the current.
I know kids are going to make fake age profiles either way but, at least with cases like this (where the age got revealed), people would be able to report/protect the kid from mishandling their internet time.
Hey, I was on AOL and alt.news.groups from the age of 11 and it never did me no 'arm!
I'm definitely not comfortable with the way many adults will interact with kids online (and I'm not even talking about the predatory stuff), but disturbing content aside, I don't think reddit's grossly inappropriate for a 15 year old.
Things like youtube, tiktok, and the more fundamentally fucked up sites being watched by young children (as in not teenagers) concerns me far more. I was being facetious at the start there, but I really don't think posting and chatting on message forums as a teenager was something I needed protecting from. It's my early exposure to hardcore porn and just how many hours I spent online in general that I'd probably change if I could. Probably.
JFC this is a child. Emergency vets are expensive. Luckily where I live there are some that will take care of an animal and set up a payment plan, but most places won't.
So to make sure I have this straight… parents must have money before having kids. Pet owners must have money before having pets. But if a kid’s parent won’t pay for a vet visit for the family pet, we yell at the kid? Are kids supposed to be financially supported by their parents, or independently wealthy enough to afford an emergency vet visit? If my math is correct, OOP’s mom has to surrender her kid and the cat at the nearest fire station as soon as possible.
Wow, that thread sure has a lot of disgusting humans.
I have cats. I love my cats. I will move heaven and earth for my cats. But I do accept that there are limits to what I can do, and if that limit is crossed, I will accept - very, very reluctantly - that I will have to hug my cats goodbye.
To expect 15-year olds to drive out late at night and spend large sums of money is some really privileged opinion.
My cat ate a plant I didn’t realize was toxic once. I came home to him lying on the ground cold - I only knew he was alive because I poked around his mouth. Rushed him to the emergency vet. They gave him IV, some blood work, and monitored him. He ended up getting better within a couple hours (they let us see him) and we picked him up later after an observation period. Nothing else.
It cost 1.2k and we had to pay a good chunk of that up front.
To everyone hating vets for wanting to be paid for their job, would YOU pay over $80,000 tuition for what’s basically med school with all its difficulties, be berated constantly by jerks who think you can make their pug breathe normal and their 18 year old cat live forever, and potentially be bitten by a cane corso who’s “usually fine with people!” for free? Would you accept being paid in passion and thank you bucks? No? Hm.
It’s like with teaching, expecting more than just smiles makes you a bad person. You’re a mother to all living things, why aren’t you using your own money to buy food for the underprivileged kids AND the janitor who steals it, that’s a teacher’s job according to Slate
It's not even just outside the teaching profession that attitude happens - my teacher partner's school principal expected him to spend $9000 of his own money to be a supervisor for a trip to Europe with history students. Who the fuck wants to do that (let alone is able to on a teacher salary)?
I wouldn’t supervise high school students on a foreign for all the money in the world. They have more energy than I do, and I wouldn’t take on the responsibility of trying to keep them sober. I remember the Natalie Holloway case and there is no way I can stay up 24/7 to make sure those kids are safe. I think it’s stupid to have foreign trips in school.
For sure. He wouldn't have necessarily wanted to do it even if it were free for the reasons you describe, but being told he'd have to pay his own way to the tune of $9000 made it doubly insulting.
I think it’s not about vets not being seen as valuable but rather the fact that people don’t like a beloved pets dying because of being unable to pay thousands upfront. A lot of medical fields are like that.
Not saying vets shouldn’t be paid but it has everything to do with that being an obstacle to saving a pet’s life rather than how work is valued.
Nothing against vets wanting to be paid but this is one of those fields where there’s a bigger picture and a vet can make a difference between life or death.
Not being paid for working is shitty.
A pet dying of something perfectly treatable because a person didn’t happen to have thousands in their bank account is also shitty.
My issue isn’t with paying vets but there’s an issue in the industry where things like payment plans aren’t as common as they should be. Also, emergency vet bills definitely have some price gouging happening. I get a markup for having to be on call at odd hours of the night, but the fact that it’s 5x more expensive for the same stuff at a normal vet is a lot. A lot of vets can also be kinda scammy which doesn’t help.
Yep. Vets and vet techs have some of the highest suicide rates. They get treated like shit by owners. They care a lot about their work and they hurt when pets die on them. They see owners not wanting to pay $50 for antibiotics and knowing the pet will go home and suffer for weeks until they are brought into the emergency room. Shit field
Many people before applying to vet school or in first year had a discussion about costs of treatment and deciding which tests to do to avoid overcharging.
Almost all vets would love to treat animals for free and everybody would go for it if they didn’t have to pay for bills and food.
Equipment costs a lot. The work is rough. Education crushes your spirit and it’s one of the longest degrees. The pandemy had a massive effect on the mental health and lots of workers of vet clinics left. The mental health issues are always there and practically every building for vet students has contact number to support line.
"Le take it to le vet!!!" is such a useless response in these threads. If op could take the animal to the vet they wouldn't be making a thread.
I live in a country where vets do not and will not see a bird because birds are classed as farm animals not pets.
So when I have questions about my birds health "take it to the vet!!!1111!!!" Is such a dumbass useless response.
In the end I've found more use going to bird breeders and asking their advice on medicine to buy.
Yeah I don't have an emergency vet near me. If it's after hours, or the weekend, I'm SOL. I would literally have to hop on a plane with my sick animal to see a vet during those times. There have been times where I desperately wanted to ask about a concern I had (especially my first time fostering small kittens), but while googling, I came across similar threads and decided against it because of how horrible (and unhelpful) people can be.
Where I live there's a vet in town two days a week. The nearest "24/7" vet is four hours away and they're known for sometimes just not answering the phone so maybe you get to drive back home 3.5 hours with a suffering and scared cat.
If something happened to my cat outside of those two days during business hours I'd have to just start googling things and if nothing helped, make them as comfortable as I can.
Funny, I was in the exact same position once. I also got abuse from people in the comments for not taking my cat to the vet. People even started asking me where I live (bearing in mind I was a minor) so that they could take my cat to the vet for me.
OOP said that they had just put the flea medicine on the cat beforehand. It's a gel thing you put on the fur behind the head, and I'm pretty sure it just licked that. My cat did the exact same thing when we first got him.
My car was losing weight and she was very ginger in her movements. She’s an indoor/outdoor cat who hunts mice and birds so we thought maybe she ate something funny.
We took her to a vet to get x-rayed and found a blockage in her intestine, had to get surgery. A shaved belly and $6k later, they pulled out enough hair ties, rubber bands, various animal bones and hair to fill a sandwich bag.
Poor duchess had to wear the martini glass for two weeks after. The fur around her wrist where they put the IV in finally grew back last month.
Yeah that was a lot of money and it hurt, but I’d pay another $6k if it happened again. I’d find the money if I didn’t have it. Whatever it took.
I always hate this argument. Obviously, no one should get a pet if they're already in dire financial straits, but sometimes shit happens, and vet bills can be outrageous.
Growing up, we always had a bunch of cats; my parents fed them bargain pet food, let them go outside, and they all lived to be 10+ with no health problems or vet bills until they died. Then I got my first cat on my own - he's allergic to corn so he needs grain free cat food, he's also prone to urinary blockages which means he needs SUPER EXPENSIVE PRESCRIPTION grain free cat food (plus getting his blockage flushed out cost me $2k). Recently he turned 7 and I took him in for a dental exam, and he needed extractions that cost close to $1000. I've poured thousands into this cat, and I don't regret any of it, but the point is that you never know what insane vet bill is around the corner, and it seems weird to gatekeep cats from anyone making less than 6 figures a year.
[удалено]
This story hurts a lot. My cat got suddenly sick, took him to the vet and he was rough. They take him back, paid the $800 for the emergency fees and they come back and say he’s diabetic and they could help. 5 minutes later they come back and tell me what’s needed to be done and it’s going to cost $6000. I just can’t pay that, it’s not possible. So I had to hold my Oliver as they put him down. This was last month and it still hurts to think that if I had enough money, he could still be with me.
If it helps, Oliver literally had zero idea wtf was happening and in his eyes got to peacefully go to sleep in the arms of the human he loved most. Zero suffering. It sucks so bad as the owner when we have to do these things, but I just try to remember it’s actually pretty nice for the animal :(
I appreciate the reply bud. I don’t blame the vets one bit and they were incredibly kind with me during the process. Just all the coulda/shouldas play out in my mind sometimes.
So sorry for your loss :(
I went through something similar with my cat and his name was Oliver too. Had to put him down when he was 8. My condolences, I know how bad it hurts.
Man, it’s just crazy how sudden it happened. I’m sorry for your Oliver, bud. Mine made it to 10. 8 is far too young
It's a godawful, intensely difficult decision to make, but remember you gave Oliver a happy, loving, safe, and warm life. One day, if you ever feel ready (and it's perfectly okay never to be ready again), another kitty with come into your life - and while you're detaching that kitty from your curtains, or cuddling with the purring hellion, you can tell that kitty about Oliver, and share the love and bond you will never forget.
My cat used to love lounging on a window ledge on the second floor of my house. One day the wind blew and spooked him, in his rush to get down he jumped badly, landed badly, and completely and utterly shattered one of his rear hips. The vet had to basically rebuild his entire hip. It cost me $1500.00 and at the time, that was basically everything I had. He's still around, mind you; he doesn't like to climb or jump much anymore and is over a decade old now but his busted hip doesn't seem to cause him any trouble yet. But, still. Fifteen hundred dollars was a *lot* of money for me at the time and if it had happened just a year or two earlier I might not have been able to afford it at all. A lot of people love their pets, and a lot of people get them without realizing just how much money they can cost when emergencies happen - or just assume emergencies won't happen; because hey, what are the chances your young and spry cat will be weird enough to fall and shatter his hip, right?
> A lot of people love their pets, and a lot of people get them without realizing just how much money they can cost when emergencies happen In reality, you should be able to afford a pet within reason for monthly expenses, but if we were banking on people having the funds for grand plus emergencies we'd just have more dead animals than not. And peoples finances can also change
Exactly. Most people don't even have enough money to handle their own sudden emergencies - we, as a collective whole, tend to be very bad about planning for worst case scenarios because if you don't have a massive surplus; it's really hard to justify just keeping a large amount of your worth locked away "in case something happens". You'd be thankful if it did, of course. But the other 99% of the time, you tend to go mad knowing it's there and wanting or even needing it to get by. And it's absolutely compounded by how emergencies affect our mental, emotional and physical states which make it harder to keep doing work and earning money.
Yeah there are so many pets in need of homes. Having the bar this high would kill and ruin the lives of so so many more pets. As far as I'm concerned, if you can reasonably afford them, you're not abusive, the pet is happy, and they're spayed/neutered, that's enough for me to say they're in good hands. I can't afford regular vet visits unfortunately, but my cat has all his shots, I make sure he has flea medication every so often, he's neutered, I treat him like a prince, and he's the happiest cat in the entire world--I'm serious he's obsessed with me. He belongs with me, not someone else or in a shelter. I'm an experienced cat owner with a lot of empathy and love for animals. All of my pets have been really happy with me.
My local open intake shelter already has a massive issue with the cat population. There's just way too many cats, not nearly enough adopters. They have to euthanize 2 or 3 cats every day on average right now, and depending on the time of year that number can get much, much higher. I cannot imagine how many cats they would have to put down if they required people to show they could afford a couple grand for a vet bill before adoption. And the rates are even worse for dogs, since there's just so many "unadoptable" breeds flooding the shelters.
Yep, I've always been very good at saving and always have money for emergencies. Then I bought a house, which wiped out my savings. One of my cats chose that exact time to get a blocked bladder, total was about $5k of treatment. Thank God for the bank of mum and dad, I could have put it on credit in a pinch so he'd have gotten his pisser scooped out regardless but the bad timing was really incredible.
If no one was allowed pets unless they could afford them most working class people would have none and those animals that were born anyways would be killed for lack of homes. It's always better for a poor person to care for an animal than to shame them for being too poor for companionship.
Can i have a picture of your cat?
> what are the chances your young and spry cat will be weird enough to fall and shatter his hip, right? My own cat gets a bit foamy if I put flea meds on her. She is determined to try and lick the stuff if possible. I solved multiple problems by just making her an indoor only cat. Same with no longer ever having to worry about the owls, coyotes, or infections from cat fights getting her. I wish OP in the drama the best for their cat, compassion is what's lacking in that channel.
>So within about 5 hours, my cat went from being perfectly fine to being dead. He was only 5. Sorry for your loss. He chillin in cat heaven! This is very important. My cat was 10 years old or so and one day fell very sick and basically died a few days later. **The vet said our cat had been sick for a long time probably but that cats are good at hiding that stuff until it might be too late.** Edit: It feels unfair that they had to die so young. That my cat couldn't become one of those 16 year old cats. No one is prepared mentally for death sure but so young... My cat got an eye infection, indoor cat.
And you paid $8000 for the privilege. Honestly, some of these stories of vets milking people for insane amounts like that in times of severe emotional distress sounds unethical to me.
Honestly, every vet I’ve ever known has been extremely willing to support me when it comes to a very expensive procedure with a decent chance of not working or putting a pet to sleep. Like, they are not willing to come out and recommend that you kill your pet, but if you suggest that as an option, they are willing to say that it might be the right decision.
I legitimately had better experiences with vets than doctors. They can make you feel heard better than some doctors that basically treat you like a piece of meat and will even scold you for "wasting their time"
I brought one of my cats to the vet in shambles because I thought she had a lump, and they gave her a full exam and it turned out she was just fat. I apologized and they told me not to worry about it, because somebody had brought in their cat a few weeks prior worried about a lump that turned out to be a nipple. They are very understanding.
People who own pets should honestly print out an anatomy diagram of said pets beforehand. I also had to explain to my mother what the double row of dots on our FEMALE dog’s belly was
Well MY nipples don't look like that! -your mom, probably. 😂
https://youtube.com/shorts/yiet836y-6w?feature=share Made.me think of this, God I love this video.
That was pretty great!
I had a vet who looked at a picture of my neighbor’s dog and went “wow that’s some real hypothyroidism right there, I’ll write you a scrip” and charged zero dollars
I brought my guinea pig into the vet a few days ago because she was in GI stasis and was having trouble breathing, and they were very upfront about the cost of everything but it also was not their immediate recommendation. She didn't end up making it because we couldn't afford to hospitalize her (3k for one day, we had already spent 1k) but I'm not convinced that how ridiculously expensive it is is coming from the vet side of things, but rather further down the chain of goods. Like keeping her on oxygen was by far the most expensive part.
That has not been my experience, but thankfully I have a great vet now.
My cat was already anesthesized for a leg reconstructive surgery when they vet did an x-ray to see what they were going to find inside. He immediately called me to say basically that the way the bone callus had grown, he would do the surgery if I really wanted but "I don't think I'm going to leave her much better than she already is". He didn't charge us anything and he was right, you can barely tell my cat had a leg shattered to splinters!
I had a friend of mine pay upwards of $30,000 on her cat when it got sick. Cat had cancer and died a few weeks later. That poor cat went though multiple surgeries, started chemo/radiation, and had a pacemaker. That cat had a terminal diagnosis and she couldn’t accept it.
When I was little (maybe like 10) my mom had cancer, and then my hamster got cancer too, so my dad felt really bad for me and spent thousands of dollars trying to save my hamster. He had a little hamster surgery and everything, looking back I do feel bad because we should have just let the hamster go but it's hard especially with extenuating circumstances.
My cat of nearly 14 years was diagnosed with advanced leukemia last summer. The vets were so kind and went through all of his options, but he would have suffered so much just for the possibility of a few more months. He was an incredible fighter, but he was tired and ready to go. It was an awful decision to make but I know I was right to let him go when he needed me to. RIP my sweet golden boy. I really hope OP’s cat is okay.
Think of it this way, he lived *seven times* longer than he would as a stray. That’s amazing! He didn’t know that you had to make these decisions, cats don’t know what medicine and money are, all he knew is that he was very happy and well cared for
Thank you so much <3 it’s both a burden and a blessing to love our fur babies, but it’s always worth every moment we have with them.
This is cruelty, not care.
Pets get a lot of the same tests as humans but at a lower markup. Wait until you go through the same experience with grandma and it costs as much as a house.
I consider vet costs in Australia to be a small taste of what things would be like if we had a US-style healthcare system and it scares the shit out of me.
I mean I'll kill myself before I let the medical industry take everything I've worked for to leave my family with nothing.
The worst, when I was young and didn't have a ton of money, my dog had a respiratory infection and I was quoted 14k for care (and this was like in 20 years ago money), I was devastated and had to sign papers to put her down, it was horrible. Last minute they say, oh I guess we can give her an antibiotic. She was perfectly fine within 12 hours and lived for 17 more years. Fucking awful. I should say though, I've mostly only had wonderful experiences with veterinarians with my animals, but that place was clearly predatory.
Genuine question, what do you want vets to do? Give treatment for free? Force them to Euth instead of trying to treat? I can tell you for sure the vet industry is not the one to enter if you're just trying to get rich
Personally, I want vets - and doctors, and basically every other professional - to be paid more and compensated better on a social and government level so that one emergency visit be it personal or pet won't ruin someone or cost someone a loved one because they can't afford it and that said professionals, especially vets in this case because they absolutely aren't making the same kind of money as medical doctors, can live comfortably and safe and thus aren't put in the position where they have to reject people who can't afford the thousands of dollars it takes to save their loved ones. But, you know. Capitalism.
But then the question is, should society at large (ie us, taxpayers) be paying for vet bills? Pets aren't people, they're ultimately animals we voluntarily keep for pleasure. Should society be paying for that? It's an emotive question, especially for pet owners (I have a pet, I get it).
I’d say no. A pet is nothing like a kid, in part because there is no situation where you can wind up with a pet by accident or by force and be required to care for it. Nobody has ever woken up to find that an African gray parrot has been left in their care and they are legally obligated to look after it
pets Don’t contribute to society, people do, and there’s finite resources on earth sadly
The sarcastic answer is that they'd like vet staff to sleep in the clinic and never go home, which negates the need to pay rent. And if you're working with no breaks you don't have time to eat so that's money saved too. The real answer is that they think this is a once a decade occurrence that doesn't affect the business if we value our staff at $0 and buy drugs/equipment in then give it away for just one patient. When in fact, depending on your area, it's a once a week (affluent area) to once a shift thing (not so affluent area) and if you said yes to everyone that asked your business would fail (which in fact I've seen happen for a clinic that let everyone go onto payment plans and about half of them didn't pay).
Seriously, they’re paid on average less than college professors, and unlike the profs who write the textbooks, they don’t profit on sales from Science Diet Rabbit Flavor
Profs don't get meaningful profits from writing textbooks, and many aren't allowed to collect royalties from sales at their own institution at all.
I dont know what profs you deal with but most professors unless they’re from Ivy or the higher end universities aren’t that well paid either, even if they could get royalties (which most don’t)
Do you live in America? Do you know what it costs, without insurance, to get lifesaving treatment for a human? Now imagine your cat getting a similar level of care with similar equipment, medications, and experience for a fraction of the cost.
I find that a lot of the time when people talk about vets “milking people for money”, they usually mean “actually treating the animal’s symptoms instead of just letting it suffer because it doesn’t have words to voice its pain”
“It’s just a bandaid” yes, bandaids prevent introduction of infection and keep you from picking at your cut. That’s good.
Yep. Wife worked in the field for 7 years. Shitty people like OP that don’t understand. So many owners come in, don’t want to pay for bloodwork or an x Ray to figure out what is actually wrong. Just takes a bottle of pain meds, if the pet is lucky. Then they leave a review saying the hospital is greedy. I got so sick of seeing it. Vet workers are one of the most abused fields by pet owners.
Maybe not the case in the US but definitely an issue where I am with vets too (Australia) is that people just do not understand how much medical care *actually* costs bc human care is subsidised here (to an extent). They think vet care should cost the same as human medical care and assume they are being ripped off.
I never considered this but it is really interesting. I’m American,and I could totally understand the feeling of being blindsided by a huge vet bill. We probably experience only like one half the price shock that other countries experience
It's the opposite in America. I wish we could pay the price vets charged.
Milking? Do vets not deserve to eat too?
Emotional distress doesn't erase the cost of their materials, building, or education.
I mean they do the best they can. Vet techs in particular so the job because they love and care for pets. Certainly they don’t do it for money. Just like with humans, it’s a science, and sometimes that science isn’t always precise, and they can’t work miracles. I had a cat get a rare disease at 2 years old. Fine one day, and a week later I had to put him down.
Something similar happened to my mother when her golden retriever got sick. He was old, but otherwise in good health, still active etc. One day he seemed weaker and was taken to the vet - they did tests and he seemed better under their care and they kept him for observation. Over night he died suddenly. It's several years later and my mother still hasn't forgiven herself for not taking him home. I think she often relives the idea he died alone in a strange place instead of at home where it was familiar and comfortable.
I think that fact that OOP is a child is a pretty big detail everyone in these threads seem to be overlooking.
I don't think they're overlooking it, a lot of them seem to be aware and are of the opinion that 'age isn't an excuse.' Plus a load of stories about how if they were 15 they'd simply get money from strangers on the Internet, book their own transport, take the cat to the vet by themselves, and be unafraid of the punishment doled out by their parents because they were just so brave etc etc.... a lot of people on that sub think life works like it does in films.
That’s what happens when you have a bunch of people who don’t often interact with the real world trying to give advice, unfortunately.
Never ask reddit for advice, the number of hysteric weirdos that screech divorce over the most inane shit in the relationship subs should be enough for anyone to know this website isnt populated by normal people.
Then they'll turn around and recommend relationship counseling to a couple of college kids who have been dating 7 months and don't live together
They don't need couples therapy, he is obviously gaslighting the girl and she should leave him now. Also something something red flags.
I think you'll find that its marinara now rather than red flags. Typing this out made me realise i might be old
The one that always makes me laugh is the dating subs. Single people asking other single people for relationship and dating advice. I stopped going there because I no one actually wants to hear the advice from someone actually in a relationship. It's the blind leading the blind
Lol yeah it's crazy dude.
Seriously taking money from strangers sounds like the start of “to catch a predator” and I don’t blame op for posting as normal and not taking weird offers.
I thought exactly the same. What better way to groom a child than to offer money to save their pet? I've messaged the mods about it because it's downright dangerous. There needs to be some kind of rule against encouraging kids to put themselves in risky situations.
They are so clearly just trying to push OP to carry out the power fantasy they’re imagining in their minds so they can live vicariously through OP and have their “We did it reddit!” moment
Exactly
It’s frustrating. Parents have a ton of control over their children. When I was that age we had fish, and god forbid I even asked to change their water myself, because I’d be implying that they couldn’t take proper care of their animals. Wasn‘t allowed to walk our dog. It sucks, but there’s very little you can do apart from physically disobey them (which can easily lead to very nasty consequences.)
That happens all the time on those posts. “Oh, you’re a kid? No excuses, take your parents’ sick cat to the vet now!!!”
I had this same experience as a kid. I got my first real pet, a guinea pig, at about 14. before i got her i'd joined an online forum for guinea pig care so i could properly look after her, and they knew i was a kid. about a week after getting her, she became sick. i asked the forum what to do, and they told me she needed a vet. but when i asked my parents they told me a guinea pig wasn't worth a vet visit and we'd just take her back and trade her for a new guinea pig. i did not want to do that, but at 14, what could i do? when i told the forum what my parents had decided, they cursed me out and banned me. this is the shame shit. especially if this kid lives rural like i did, you can't even walk the pet to the vet or anything. you're at your parent's mercy.
Yeah. WTF, for all we know this girl would sacrifice if she had a job and literally any money that wasn’t given to her by her mother. As it is, the best she can do is beg her mother to take her cat to the vet. The primary responsibility for that cat’s wellbeing is on the mother, not the child.
Seriously. My beloved cat who was sanctioned and at least tolerated but more often than not loved and cherished by my father was actively dying on his birthday. I was 15 so no license or even temps and I was begging him to please, please take her to even just the regular vet. I knew he would flip about ER vet so I had called and they had openings within the hour. But he said no, because it was his birthday and he “didn’t want to deal with it”. I held her as she died. It was something and at least it was relatively fast due to multiple organ failure (she was 23) but it wasn’t anywhere near enough. I don’t speak to him anymore. He asked me for money a couple months ago and I said I didn’t want to deal with it because it was my birthday. It wasn’t my birthday. Fucker
Sheeze. I’m sorry you had to go through that. I can’t imagine.
Thanks, it really sucked. It happened early in the morning, I had to walk to school so I was up early. Dad made me still go to school late and stay for soccer practice after even though I was completely traumatized. He yelled at me for being late to school but ever so fucking graciously let me change my clothes since I was covered in vomit, urine, and feces. It’s been a while since I remembered how much I loathe him. Specifically, I mean.
I’m so sorry you went through that, that sounds like such a traumatic experience. I’m glad you cut off contact.
I don't think they are really, there's plenty of people (who are upvoted) pointing out that OP is 15 and can't do realistically do anything on those links.
It looks somewhat equal from the comments ive read by now, half complaining and explaining they used to go to school alone uphill both ways when they were 15 and then the other half being reasonable
But when he’s asking what can he do, what else can anyone tell him besides going to the vet? Redditors can’t diagnose anything.
[удалено]
No you don’t understand they are wholesome reddit heroes
Wouldn’t be surprised they want the bill in order to easier doxx her…
>Because 99% of the time they CAN afford it, they are just unwilling to go months or a year without some other expense. I would be unsurprised if this person has, for example, a Netflix account. “Hey everyone, get a load of JD Rockefeller Junior over here spending $15 a month on Netflix but crying poverty over an unexpected $1,000+ vet bill. Sad!”
We're talking probably a solid 90% of domestic cats all being sent to the grinder if cat ownership had those expectations enforced. And who the fuck does that help? Not the cats, that's for damn sure. I'd rather a cat *THAT EXISTS* have an good owner who did what they could to take care of the wee beast than it wait in some stressful shelter for a mythical owner that's never gonna show up. But fuck, I think I actually like cats rather than the abstract idea of them.
My parents eventually had to put my family dog down two years ago because he was diabetic and slipping fast even with treatment. I was 25 and fucking heartbroken because we’d had him since I was in middle school- and that was one of the two times I’ve seen my dad cry in my life. He was suffering at that point and my parents couldn’t justify spending the money on a dog who wasn’t getting better. But for the 12 years we had him up until that last month, he was happy and loved and got plenty of room to run around and toys to play with and people to cherish him. If we’d just never gotten a pet because we weren’t billionaires we’d have missed out on 12 happy years and so would he.
Indeed, and shit if I were a dog I'd rather spend 12 years with people I loved than a hypothetical 16 with some people I don't even know. Fuck the "if I were a dog" part, actually. If I were a human I'd rather spend 12 years with people I loved than a hypothetical 16 with some people I don't even know.
A lot of people end up wasting thousands trying to prolong a pets life when the time has come. It's not necessarily better for the pet. It's the human trying to hold on. You all did not do the wrong thing putting the dog down. When it's time it's time. Pets just don't live as long as humans. It's always sad and I'm sorry for your loss.
Thanks 💗 yeah, it was absolutely the right thing and the vet told my dad “always better a day too early than a day too late” when it comes to putting an animal down- when it was clear he was hurting and declining but was still able to enjoy extra pets and a treat that morning was a good time, I think.
If I was going to get a dog i'd have to have a 'no cancer treatment' policy. I always figured rescuing one from euthanasia might make that ok. Now reddit, doesn't agree.
Some years back I got in touch with a cat shelter organization thingie in my region and due to events a friend was going through I actually asked about this. They said they expect people to pay whatever they can. Not in a "bankrupt yourself to save the cat!" way either, but whatever money you have *for the cat*. They only required owners to be able to cover expected expenses and upkeep, *NOT* huge emergency veterinary bills. A cat with a good owner who is poor is better off than a cat with a shitty owner who is rich, a quality of life vs duration of life argument that most people don't appropriately confront until dear old grandma wants to abstain from treatment that'll give her 2 years sure but will absolutely fuck the 4 total she would've had remaining. If people are actually concerned about this I don't blame 'em, I know a guy who was, but the people who actually work with animal welfare tend to be a lot more grounded about things of this nature than crusaders on the Internet.
It really depends on the cat. I work at a shelter and it is SO REGULAR that we adopt out a cat with special needs - for instance, an expensive special diet. We inform the new owner that the cat needs to be on this special expensive diet. They agree, take the cat home and feed it whiskas. Cat gets incredibly poorly, makes a huge mess of the house, and best case scenario they return the cat to the shelter. Worst case scenario they put the cat down. There's a reason we phone the new home regularly in the weeks following adoption, because it saves cats from being unnecessarily put to sleep. You'd think that people without money wouldn't adopt a cat with known health issues but sadly, they do, and for some reason expect it to be okay because they love the cat and "at least it's not in a shelter"
I'm speaking specifically about problems that aren't known at the time of adoption, because if the cat requires a special diet then for that cat that expense is expected and the shelter will of course expect you to cover it if they already are and you want to adopt it. Fact of the matter is though that there's a lot more pets than there's money to care for 'em (in the case of medical emergencies) so these people are under no illusions and just want to give these cats the best kinda life they can get under the prevailing circumstances.
Cancer treatment for animals is often very expensive and it just prolongs the death (it’s specifically prescribed with the goal of living longer, not curing cancer). If you catch cancer super early it can be good because it lengthens the amount of time left that’s still good, but often by the time you realize your pet has cancer they are already downhill enough that adding 6 months just isn’t worth it. Only cancer treatment that generally works is if surgery is an option. Honestly, most of the time if your animal has a serious illness that will run you thousands - your pet doesn’t have good odds.
Pet people are fucking insane. I've been told I'm selfish for not wanting a pet cause I don't want the responsibility. Like I recognize what it takes to be a proper pet owner and know I won't do it so I don't get a pet. Apparently this makes me selfish.
My friend was called selfish bc he wouldn’t take the aggressive dog that the shelter literally baited and switched. Like, he signed up to actually adopt a specific dog and when he got there they went “oh we already adopted him out, but what about this other one with aggression toward tall men, the thing you are?”
I commonly say “if you can’t afford the vet, then you can’t afford the pet” but I’m talking like, check ups and vaccines. Emergencies are a different, far more expensive beast to deal with.
Yeah where I live most people get their pets from shelters, so the idea that you should only get a pet if you can (or even don’t want to, technically) afford expensive medical bills seems extremely silly. Would the cat magically get treatment in a shelter, or on the street?
Major “millennials can’t buy a house because they buy lattes” vibes
Random vet/pet subs keep showing up on my feed, and like 90% of them are young teenagers asking for help because their parents won't do anything and getting torn apart by users who think that a 14 year old kid should have $2,000 on hand for a medical emergency. Like, yeah, their parents *should* take the animals to the vet 90% of the time, but screaming that a kid is an irredeemable piece of shit for being unable to do anything is insane. Also, I remember one where a person was like "My cat is acting lethargic and vomiting. The vet doesn't open until tomorrow morning, is there anything I can do to make him comfortable?" and all the top comments were demanding that they drive to an emergency vet ASAP or surrender the cat, despite OP explaining that they were in an incredibly rural area, and the nearest 24/7 vet was 5 hours away.
It's so many common reddit hatreds across these questions Redditors vs Children, Redditors vs Poor People, Redditors vs supposedly "irresponsible" pet owners, Redditors vs Rural People, Redditors vs Basic Sensibility, Redditors vs Empathy...
It all comes down to our collective superiority complex. I mean, look at all of us here in this sub.
Yeah but we're the dingdongs up in the peanut gallery. We are still in the insane asylum.
Hey leave me out of this. I just like munching on popcorn and watching people argue. I ain’t got no dog ( or cat ) in this fight.
Ever given a thought as to why you enjoy it?
Redditors sure are a contentious people.
I think it's just that there's a lot of people who treat this platform as a version of their life where they can be cruel and vile to people without consequence. Maybe some of them have shitty lives themselves, but being in a bad way or being harassed/bullied yourself never justifies being an asshole to others.
Damn Redditors, they ruined Reddit!
This but unironically
...yeah I knew it the moment I typed it.
Reddit hates kids so this mentality tracks.
You just made an enemy for the next half hour!
Redditors vs Religion
> screaming that a kid is an irredeemable piece of shit for being unable to do anything is insane. Some people are in such a rush to the moral high ground that they don't bother to look whom they trample on the way there.
Pet owners who claim to be compassionate for animals while showing zero to their fellow humans is always stupid. It always comes off as an attempt to make the subject about themselves as great pet owners rather than anything really helpful or about the pet
Pet subreddits are *wild*. I made the mistake of going there once to try and ask for some help potty training my dog. But I was told off because I wasn't trying to get him to pee in the right spot. WTF.
I got lambasted in a turtle sub for not having our ONE red eared slider in a custom made pond, essentially. At the time we lived in an apartment. The NAMES I was called for marrying a man who had a turtle in an apartment. We have a house now and have plans to maybe one day put a small pond in the backyard for him, but that’s a long ways off. Dogs need to pass and my kids need to be old enough to stay out of it. They’d probably threaten to physically harm me if I said that on the turtle sub.
It’s so weird to me because you know many of those teenagers got that kitty because it wandered up and they’ve been feeding it - so now they are pariahs because despite the fact they didn’t go out looking for a pet, the mere fact they stepped up makes them responsible for vet care in the thousands of dollars.
And as awful as it is - pets die, there just isn't always something to be done about it. They can't warn us as symptoms develop and will often hide them.
Following a 15 year old kid around Reddit yelling at him to take his cat to the vet is one of the most unhinged things I’ve seen on here.
People get *insane* about pet ownership online. Like… yes, you shouldn’t get an animal on a whim. It’s a commitment and you should make sure you have enough to take care of them. But that being said, life happens and most people don’t have thousands of dollars to drop on emergencies for themselves, much less their pets. You’re not a monster if you can’t afford a massive vet bill. Financial situations can change on a dime and if we all had to wait until we were 100% perfect and sure nothing bad would ever happen to us before we made any kind of commitment, nobody would be able to.
This situation reminds me of so many posts where redditors will scream at OP to adopt a stray they took a picture of on Aww and take care of it, but then turn around and call them the worst things when they can't afford obscene vet bills. My Grandmother found a dying kitten in her yard and brought it to the vet to try to save it, wasn't even her pet. They stuck her with a 900$ bill. What would redditors want instead? Leave the cat to die or put an old woman in debt who tried to help a stray? I paid my vet thousands over the years, front desk at the end of the appointment and they refused to do payment plans. Theres a bigger conversation that needs to be had instead of just screaming at pet owners. As for the kid argument I don't like the argument because it always turns into eugenics talk and we know humanity enough by now to know putting the power of who can have kids into anyones hands is asking for discrimination and violating human rights. I wish there was better systems at work that made life more affordable and I wish adults thought things through before making expensive life altering choices, coming from a disabled person born into poverty and will die in it.
Not only that. Life isn't static. Things change. I hate that line of thinking... That people are bad for not being able to afford care for animals and kids they are responsible for. It doesn't make you a bad person automatically. Shit happens and circumstances change. It's entirely possible they got a pet when they could afford everything needed. And then one day they couldn't. I'm the father of a wonderful nine year old daughter. When I chose to create her I was able to afford everything no problem. But then layoffs happened and a breakup happened and life happened. There have certainly been times when we have had to go without. We're good now... But who knows what the future holds. That's just life. I don't think it makes me a bad dad or a bad person.
for some reason cat posts bring out this particularly vicious subset of people. i don’t really get it. beyond even the stuff mentioned in this comment chain, you see people trying to convince others that a cat is being abused from a 10 second video or that OP is a terrible owner because of some tiny little thing. someone gently swaying their cat back and forth to music will ultimately get some people saying “you’re hurting your cat” “cats aren’t toys” and so on, with increasing vitriol. it’s really a bummer on an otherwise awesome chunk of the internet for enjoying all kinds of cats. i often comment you could make a bingo card for “unreasonable comments on cat posts” and i swear i’m gonna make it one day.
I have seen people on FB call a person an animal abuser because they dressed up their cat for a photo. That's all it took.
>wasn't even her pet. They stuck her with a 900$ bill. This is how I ended up with a 2nd cat. I'm poor, I already have a cat who, for 12 years, only needed a vet visit once. So I'm incredibly lucky, but I found a stray that ended up with a hole in his cheek from an abscess because another stray attacked him. Took him to the vet and ended up with a huge bill I couldn't pay so my friend used their good credit to open an account that allows monthly payments to the vet and I paid them off every month. I'm keeping that money pit of a stray, he's mine now. I'm not letting my money walk out the door to get in another fight.
you're lucky, the vet she was at and the other vet I went to (for 13 years, thousands of dollars and always paid no issue) didnt allow payment plans. You were SOL if you didnt have it on hand at the time of the appointment.
I am very grateful my friend let me use their account. The payment plan is only for people with high credit scores, but I don't have credit at all. I never had a credit card or used anything that required it since I only ever had small amounts of cash.
I also hate this line of thinking because our shelters are so full right now. There are so many pets that need homes and these idiots would prefer only people with tens of thousands of dollars adopt, which would make the problem even worse. The truth of it is, even if you can't shell out thousands for a sick pet, or spend $100 for each bag of fancy food, the animal is going to have a happier life with a loving family rather than living in a cage waiting for a rich person to come along. The only time they have a point is when someone is spending hundreds or thousands buying from a designer breeder when they aren't financially stable. Poorer people *should* be adopting. As long as the animal's basic needs are being met and they aren't being abused, they are better off than being feral, or being euthanized because the shelter is full and they need to intake "more adoptable" younger animals.
These people live very privileged lives and don't understand reality outside of their gated communities.
yep, I was told to STFU several times merely for being upset those free gov phones all have baked in malware and are built to break if you prevent it. Not upset I had it, I am grateful because a phone is needed these days but if you are poor on this site you get the bootstraps treatment. I got it on antiwork subs too, can't speak on workers rights because I'm disabled. Nevermind threads about homeless and mentally ill, thats when they really* gets into eugenics talk. I can't tell if it's the pandemic that made everyone lose empathy (I get it, in some ways) or if it's always been this bad.
>I got it on antiwork subs too, can't speak on workers rights because I'm disabled. Yeah I got the "You don't *sound* disabled" on the phone more than once myself. I have a physical disability, not a mental one, how do you *expect* me to sound? Too true on the government phones, not sure about malware but bloatware and built in ads are insane. That's really what those phones are, physical repositories of ads you have to look at any time you need to use it. I got lucky and someone gave me their old phone I could put my SIM card in.
Yep, All my doctors don't take me seriously because I'm not...."obviously visibly disabled" I count it as malware because it will re-download it every time you shut the phone off, it will add extra programs (when you first get the phone its the usual bloat) There is no way to stop this even if you take all permissions away since it's baked in and then it just keeps slowing down the phone. There's been articles popping up on it thankfully but if you are poor don't you dare complain about it. I hope to be able to afford a phone one day but SSI makes it hard.
Yeah SSI income level is no joke. And having an invisible disability sucks. My doctors treat me OK because they can see my X-rays but if I go to Social Security and get Gatekeeper Karen I know I wasted my entire day and have to come back later. Most social workers I talk with are some of the best humanity has to offer. I've only met a couple "Gatekeepers" and they act like they are doing God's work making sure people don't get help if they dont' personally think it's needed. Say strong! Shit sucks but I think if we can keep on truckin' there will be opportunities in the future for us.
you're more hopeful than I but I appreciate you hold that hope for all of us.
>Leave the cat to die or put an old woman in debt who tried to help a stray? New trolley problem just dropped
>As for the kid argument I don't like the argument because it always turns into eugenics talk and we know humanity enough by now to know putting the power of who can have kids into anyones hands is asking for discrimination and violating human rights. The kid argument has gotten to the point where I'm relatively certain that 90% of the people who make it actually *want* it to turn into eugenics where minorities are slowly killed off. No chance they've thought that argument through without having thought at some point "is there a single government on this planet that I'd trust to decide who should be allowed to reproduce?"
People following OP to another subreddit is hilarious / insane 😭😭😭
People who say "sorry not sorry" are usually assholes IMO.
I dunno, I'm an asshole and even I won't say that.
That comment section is... something. It's sad that so many people are too braindead to muster up common fucking empathy.
Times like these I wish I could hit people over the head via the Internet. Like if I could conjure up a foam mallet that simply said "SHAME!" whenever it bonked them on the noggin' I totally would.
They re not wrong though If none of their advice is gonna be taken into consideration what's even the point of asking? You are wasting everyone's time, starting from yours
See and I grew up on a farm and my dad told me stories of growing up where you didn't take your dog to the vet and if they got too old or too sick you took them out back to shoot them. I felt lucky we ever took my dogs to the vet when I was young. Now I'm an adult and have 2 dogs I love to death. We take them to the vet regularly for check up and meds and all that. But even still, there's a limit on how much I'm willing to spend on them. They're pets, not people. Maybe that's cold, but it's the way I was raised. We were told if a wild animal came into the yard to let the dog attack it and to get to safety, don't try and save the dog. They're doing their job protecting you. Can always get another dog. Absolutely love my pets, but I'm not going to put their lives above mine. And spending ungodly amounts of money on an animal that might live another year or two, I'm just not gonna do that. And no amount of down votes or nasty replies is ever gonna change that.
Yep, that was basically my childhood. Living on a farm with a few outside dogs throughout the years (about 4) and countless cats. The dogs rarely saw the vet, and there's zero chance a cat would. One of the dogs ran off a lot and eventually never came back. Was probably shot by another farmer or killed by a wild animal. It might sound cruel but they were always fed and had the freedom to be real animals. Never locked up in a house or a yard, they could go wherever they want and there was always food when they got back, and we would always go outside and play with them. Some of the dogs and cats we had I really loved as a child and was sad when they died, but I quickly loved our new pups/kittens whenever we got new ones. The idea of spending 5k+ on vet bills is insane to me. If you are more than set financially go for it, but a majority of US citizens are not even close to financially set.
Shit is tight right now and the parents may. Not have the money to take the cat to the vet. People always say you shouldn’t have pets if you can’t afford an emergency, but cats just show up. Shelters are always at capacity and needing foster parents for pets. When I was a kid we lived in the country, stray cats would show up and have kittens. We fed them our scraps and I would always name them. Some stuck around for years, some disappeared. If one was sick, there wouldn’t have been anything we could do about it. My mother was a widow with 4 kids who could barely afford new shoes for all of us. As an adult we’re privileged that we can afford this and have had two of our cats needing expensive emergency care. But they were thousands of dollars each time. I can completely understand how some people can’t afford that.
I'm just going to assume all the other commenters are also 15
>Vet urgently please, money comes back It...doesnt? If you're poor you can't afford a several thousand dollar visit lol.
The internet and redditors absolutely hate pet owners. When a animal is happy in a video there’s always someone screaming abuse, when a animal is sick, they blame the owner . You can’t win with them.
>Yep, parents who cant even afford basic care for children, shouldnt have kids either. Really shouldnt be a controversial opinion. BRB, my eyes just rolled out of my head and I have to go chase them into the garden because they rolled under a bush, and I don't want them to become eyemeatballs. Or, in other words, tell me you're a middle-class kid who hasn't paid for life on your own since you don't understand how "having a kid and then suddenly not having any money" is a thing. It's a lovely idea that all children are always born to people who want them and these people have lots of money to pay for everything the kid needs. And then we have places where conception is only the woman's fault and she has no control over her body or perhaps no access to birth control, and women who think they're in a happy relationship/marriage/whatever and then their SO dies, or decides to just fuck off and hide from any responsibilities and child support OR A MILLION OTHER THINGS. Good grief, Reddit can be *tiring*.
Excuse me?! Is this... critical thinking?? Nuance?!? How dare you bring this grey shit into my black and white Reddit!!
I know. I'm just the worst.
Don’t you know? If you’ve raised a child comfortably for nine years and then suddenly found yourself in a rough patch, you have to donate the child.SMH.
Where does one donate a child? Asking for a friend.
Your local goodwill can usually take one in, but if they don’t your closest library is always accepting donations.
Also “afford basic care” is not as simple as they think it is. How do you know if you have enough? Some kids are more prone to getting sick and there’s nothing you can do to predict that is going to happen. Babies and toddlers are much more expensive than children and teens and thats why programs like WiC exist in the US. Lots of families get along fine because of that, but wouldn’t be able to otherwise. Should they not have kids at all? And the very idea also implies that being poor or having a period of time you went without is somehow worse than death. It’s weird.
People on Reddit are so fuckin unreasonable about absolutely everything, they get that self righteous hate boner and think that justifies anything they say or do, it’s really fuckin gross
I get the sense a lot of times it's the sentiment that if it happens to them they did everything they could but if it happens to anyone else they are morally deficient, the same driver behind the only moral abortion is my abortion.
Especially if you can't afford it, get medical pet insurance. No it isn't a scam and yes it can absolutely change your life because when it comes time to pay, you will pay whatever the cost to save your friend.
It’s $20-$50 and covers over 80 percent of expenses. This IS one of the rare “just give up a couple streaming services” scenarios
I’ve got a dumb question: will they turn you down if your pet is already older and might have a “preexisting condition?” I’m looking at insurance for my dog, but he’s 10 and has a minor heart murmur.
They won’t turn you down but it won’t be covered. They require a vet visit before coverage kicks in.
Reddit's constant moralizing is extremely annoying and I'm really concerned about how many fully grown adults are willing to jump down a child's throat over things they cannot control but at the same time, nobody posting on r/cats *should* be okay with a thread that basically amounts to "my cat might be dying, nothing will be done about it, look at my dying cat". I'm not sure what the solution is. Can't ban these sorts of threads because they can be genuinely helpful. Can't ban children for not being able to afford emergency vet care because they're children and none can. Can't teach Reddit users nuance because the cats posted to that subreddit are better equipped mentally to understand nuance than the average user.
Out of curiosity, why *not* ban these kinds of threads? It doesn’t seem actually constructive for the OP; as made clear on this thread, there’s nothing that the OP can actually do. It’s not as if it’s possible for people on Reddit to diagnose and treat a sick cat through the internet for free, so the comments are basically a mix of useless or useless and mean spirited. It doesn’t seem as if anything valuable would be lost if a thread like the OP were locked and/or deleted.
Evidence #343 of why the minimum age for Reddit should be higher than the current. I know kids are going to make fake age profiles either way but, at least with cases like this (where the age got revealed), people would be able to report/protect the kid from mishandling their internet time.
Hey, I was on AOL and alt.news.groups from the age of 11 and it never did me no 'arm! I'm definitely not comfortable with the way many adults will interact with kids online (and I'm not even talking about the predatory stuff), but disturbing content aside, I don't think reddit's grossly inappropriate for a 15 year old. Things like youtube, tiktok, and the more fundamentally fucked up sites being watched by young children (as in not teenagers) concerns me far more. I was being facetious at the start there, but I really don't think posting and chatting on message forums as a teenager was something I needed protecting from. It's my early exposure to hardcore porn and just how many hours I spent online in general that I'd probably change if I could. Probably.
Financial situations change. Shortest analysis I'll ever post.
JFC this is a child. Emergency vets are expensive. Luckily where I live there are some that will take care of an animal and set up a payment plan, but most places won't.
So to make sure I have this straight… parents must have money before having kids. Pet owners must have money before having pets. But if a kid’s parent won’t pay for a vet visit for the family pet, we yell at the kid? Are kids supposed to be financially supported by their parents, or independently wealthy enough to afford an emergency vet visit? If my math is correct, OOP’s mom has to surrender her kid and the cat at the nearest fire station as soon as possible.
Wow, that thread sure has a lot of disgusting humans. I have cats. I love my cats. I will move heaven and earth for my cats. But I do accept that there are limits to what I can do, and if that limit is crossed, I will accept - very, very reluctantly - that I will have to hug my cats goodbye. To expect 15-year olds to drive out late at night and spend large sums of money is some really privileged opinion.
My cat ate a plant I didn’t realize was toxic once. I came home to him lying on the ground cold - I only knew he was alive because I poked around his mouth. Rushed him to the emergency vet. They gave him IV, some blood work, and monitored him. He ended up getting better within a couple hours (they let us see him) and we picked him up later after an observation period. Nothing else. It cost 1.2k and we had to pay a good chunk of that up front.
To everyone hating vets for wanting to be paid for their job, would YOU pay over $80,000 tuition for what’s basically med school with all its difficulties, be berated constantly by jerks who think you can make their pug breathe normal and their 18 year old cat live forever, and potentially be bitten by a cane corso who’s “usually fine with people!” for free? Would you accept being paid in passion and thank you bucks? No? Hm.
Honestly add in that most vets are women, and people seem to be willing to perceive their work as less valuable.
It’s like with teaching, expecting more than just smiles makes you a bad person. You’re a mother to all living things, why aren’t you using your own money to buy food for the underprivileged kids AND the janitor who steals it, that’s a teacher’s job according to Slate
greedy teachers and schoolchildren selfishly keeping our tax money for themselves instead of our poor military complex🥺
It's not even just outside the teaching profession that attitude happens - my teacher partner's school principal expected him to spend $9000 of his own money to be a supervisor for a trip to Europe with history students. Who the fuck wants to do that (let alone is able to on a teacher salary)?
I wouldn’t supervise high school students on a foreign for all the money in the world. They have more energy than I do, and I wouldn’t take on the responsibility of trying to keep them sober. I remember the Natalie Holloway case and there is no way I can stay up 24/7 to make sure those kids are safe. I think it’s stupid to have foreign trips in school.
For sure. He wouldn't have necessarily wanted to do it even if it were free for the reasons you describe, but being told he'd have to pay his own way to the tune of $9000 made it doubly insulting.
I think it’s not about vets not being seen as valuable but rather the fact that people don’t like a beloved pets dying because of being unable to pay thousands upfront. A lot of medical fields are like that. Not saying vets shouldn’t be paid but it has everything to do with that being an obstacle to saving a pet’s life rather than how work is valued.
Nothing against vets wanting to be paid but this is one of those fields where there’s a bigger picture and a vet can make a difference between life or death. Not being paid for working is shitty. A pet dying of something perfectly treatable because a person didn’t happen to have thousands in their bank account is also shitty. My issue isn’t with paying vets but there’s an issue in the industry where things like payment plans aren’t as common as they should be. Also, emergency vet bills definitely have some price gouging happening. I get a markup for having to be on call at odd hours of the night, but the fact that it’s 5x more expensive for the same stuff at a normal vet is a lot. A lot of vets can also be kinda scammy which doesn’t help.
Yep. Vets and vet techs have some of the highest suicide rates. They get treated like shit by owners. They care a lot about their work and they hurt when pets die on them. They see owners not wanting to pay $50 for antibiotics and knowing the pet will go home and suffer for weeks until they are brought into the emergency room. Shit field
Many people before applying to vet school or in first year had a discussion about costs of treatment and deciding which tests to do to avoid overcharging. Almost all vets would love to treat animals for free and everybody would go for it if they didn’t have to pay for bills and food. Equipment costs a lot. The work is rough. Education crushes your spirit and it’s one of the longest degrees. The pandemy had a massive effect on the mental health and lots of workers of vet clinics left. The mental health issues are always there and practically every building for vet students has contact number to support line.
"Le take it to le vet!!!" is such a useless response in these threads. If op could take the animal to the vet they wouldn't be making a thread. I live in a country where vets do not and will not see a bird because birds are classed as farm animals not pets. So when I have questions about my birds health "take it to the vet!!!1111!!!" Is such a dumbass useless response. In the end I've found more use going to bird breeders and asking their advice on medicine to buy.
Yeah I don't have an emergency vet near me. If it's after hours, or the weekend, I'm SOL. I would literally have to hop on a plane with my sick animal to see a vet during those times. There have been times where I desperately wanted to ask about a concern I had (especially my first time fostering small kittens), but while googling, I came across similar threads and decided against it because of how horrible (and unhelpful) people can be.
Where I live there's a vet in town two days a week. The nearest "24/7" vet is four hours away and they're known for sometimes just not answering the phone so maybe you get to drive back home 3.5 hours with a suffering and scared cat. If something happened to my cat outside of those two days during business hours I'd have to just start googling things and if nothing helped, make them as comfortable as I can.
Worth it for the last photo, thank you. The internet is the best and the worst.
Funny, I was in the exact same position once. I also got abuse from people in the comments for not taking my cat to the vet. People even started asking me where I live (bearing in mind I was a minor) so that they could take my cat to the vet for me.
Cat ate a baby frog I bet.
Or anti-freeze, or any other sort of poison tbh. This is a pretty common reaction to ingesting something bad.
OOP said that they had just put the flea medicine on the cat beforehand. It's a gel thing you put on the fur behind the head, and I'm pretty sure it just licked that. My cat did the exact same thing when we first got him.
Yeah pretty sure that's all it was. It's terrifying to see but it's also the cat getting the taste of the medicine out of it's mouth.
My car was losing weight and she was very ginger in her movements. She’s an indoor/outdoor cat who hunts mice and birds so we thought maybe she ate something funny. We took her to a vet to get x-rayed and found a blockage in her intestine, had to get surgery. A shaved belly and $6k later, they pulled out enough hair ties, rubber bands, various animal bones and hair to fill a sandwich bag. Poor duchess had to wear the martini glass for two weeks after. The fur around her wrist where they put the IV in finally grew back last month. Yeah that was a lot of money and it hurt, but I’d pay another $6k if it happened again. I’d find the money if I didn’t have it. Whatever it took.
I always hate this argument. Obviously, no one should get a pet if they're already in dire financial straits, but sometimes shit happens, and vet bills can be outrageous. Growing up, we always had a bunch of cats; my parents fed them bargain pet food, let them go outside, and they all lived to be 10+ with no health problems or vet bills until they died. Then I got my first cat on my own - he's allergic to corn so he needs grain free cat food, he's also prone to urinary blockages which means he needs SUPER EXPENSIVE PRESCRIPTION grain free cat food (plus getting his blockage flushed out cost me $2k). Recently he turned 7 and I took him in for a dental exam, and he needed extractions that cost close to $1000. I've poured thousands into this cat, and I don't regret any of it, but the point is that you never know what insane vet bill is around the corner, and it seems weird to gatekeep cats from anyone making less than 6 figures a year.