• Chef
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    4 months ago

    STORY TIME:

    I have one of the most expensive cats on earth.

    I recently paid ~$15,000 to have a pacemaker installed in my 4 year old shelter cat.

    She started getting very clumsy and I noticed her getting dazed more and more often. Once I brought her to the vet, I learned that she had a congenital heart condition and her heart was literally stopping for seconds on end causing her to pass out (literally dying in front of me for seconds at a time.)

    I couldn’t let her die. I adopted her during covid and could not have survived the pandemic without her.

    I am blessed in that I could afford something like that and it wasn’t even a question of whether to get her the procedure. I would have gone bankrupt if I had to choose.

    I hate that people will have to make that choice (it’s not even a choice as most people could never afford that) so after my pet insurance reimbursed me back ~$13,000, I donated it to the hospital as a grant specifically to be used towards any feline cardiac procedures that couldn’t be afforded.

    Every morning we sit together while I have my coffee and I thank the universe for letting her be there with me in that moment.

    • RebekahWSD@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Thank you for donating to help other kitties! I was lucky my mother paid the 1000 to get my cat surgery when she needed it, I don’t think we could have if it was much more. Which would be heart breaking, she’s a very good girl.

    • prettybunnys
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      4 months ago

      My dog had formed a taste for tampons.

      Her last visit to the vet they removed 6.

      She got a trip to the vet, everyone loves her, she got attention and treats and all she had to do was eat trash.

      The lesson she learned was “eat more trash” ….

      • Mouselemming
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        4 months ago

        Plain dry ones, or with delicious meat flavoring?

        May I suggest a lidded bathroom can?

    • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      My spouse worked in a vet emergency clinic. A lot of animals came in for intestinal blockages. It rarely ended well. Best case scenario, the owner realized early enough that something was going wrong, and they had enough money to pay for an expensive abdominal surgery to remove the blockage. The more usual scenario was that it was too late by far, and the pet had to be euthanized.

      They had one horrific story of a dog swallowing fishhooks; the owner took the dog home AMA after the vet was unable to get the hooks out without surgery. It almost certainly ended up dying a horrific, agonizing death.

  • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I think we had to drop $5000 in emergency vet bills and surgery for a blockage for our little asshole eating string February of 2023. Had to drive 50 minutes to a vet that could even do it.

  • CheesyGordita@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Hahahaha, damn cats. I know this well. My $1 rescue cat? Couple months later she was a $700 cat from emergency vet visits. To be fair it was mostly our fault as we left our toilet lids open and didn’t clean our toilets enough. But who would drink from a dirty toilet when you have a nice fresh bowl of water changed daily? Her, lol.

    • hswolf@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      You might want to buy a pet water fountain, cats prefer drinking running water, maybe it’s an instinct to go for “clean water”?

      Also don’t put it near the food, since the smell may make then mistake the water for spoiled.

      • CheesyGordita@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Appreciate the heads up. Yeah, that was a while ago and since then we got a fountain and she loved that till we got another cat and a gravity water bowl. The other cat only drank from the gravity water tank/bowl and now she only wants to drink from that too. lol. They are both happy now and drink lots of clean water everyday!