Pretty much this. Not to mention, OP’s responses to people questioning his intent sound to me like he’s an emotionless robot, or playing dumb.
It isn’t about thinking that animals = people. I wouldn’t ever say my cat or dog is a person. They aren’t people. I don’t claim them as dependents on my taxes, I don’t try to get them the right to vote, I don’t give them any say in the food they eat or the apartment I live in or any other decision making process. I do, however, consider them family and will treat them as such. I have a decent amount of disposable income and choose to spend it on my pets if the need arises and there is nothing wrong with that.
Personally I would never buy a car that cost more than $5,000. If I needed a car, which I certainly don’t, I would always buy used and I think spending money on a new car that depreciates the moment you drive it off the lot is more than a little foolish. I would never tell someone that the new corvette they got was a waste of money because they could find another car so much cheaper though. I would also NEVER go into a thread started by someone mourning the loss of their car or fretting over the cost of car repairs and give them shit about their feelings and then go post a thread to find out how many other people think they are foolish too. Your intentions in this thread are obviously antagonistic and I won’t discuss this with you further.
Your poll doesn’t quite work for me. I’ll spend more than a grand or two and have on a couple of occasions. That’s within my economic comfort zone - I’ll grumble but I can recover from an expense that size without too much difficulty. On the other hand I do have an amorphous upper limit. Several grand at one instant would likely trip it. So I’d probably vote for more than $1000, maybe less than $5000. Also factoring in…
…this. Including all the diagnostic work and consultation with a specialist, I spent well over a grand getting a leg on my 17-year old cat amputated ( she had an aggressive fibrosarcoma on her foot ). Primarily because a) x-rays showed her hips and spine were in good shape to take the added stress, b) cats usually recover very well from limb amputations and c) such amputations have a very good success rate in eliminating that particular cancer with that particular presentation. What I wouldn’t have done is tried chemo - making her miserable at her age for a dubious return wasn’t an option. If the x-rays had shown signs of arthritis I would have had her put down. In the end it bought her six or seven decent months until a heart attack during another procedure did her in, but she otherwise might have made a few more years. I have no particular regrets.
I don’t generally begrudge people their choices and we all have financial limits, sometimes severe ones. No one should go into the poor house or unfed on account of a pet. But I think one should ideally accept that they have undertaken a certain minimal moral obligation when they take on a pet. At least basic medical maintenance needs should be factored into the decision own one.
I went with ‘As much as it takes’ although that probably isn’t entirely true. The $1000 limit was just too low considering he cost about $2000 in the first 2 months we had him.
Well said.
Another non-voter here, but the answer is “it depends” (on age, prognosis, quality of life , etc as others have said), and based on past experience, I’d be willing to shell out quite a few dollars. (But then I’d probably qualify as a crazy cat lady too – gender notwithstanding). 
And aged grandmothers aside, if I turn the OP’s question around to myself, yes, I would absolutely want the option of deciding “enough is enough, let me go”.
I dropped $5,000 on my dog last year, as she developed congestive heart failure. About $3K was for one major emergency. She’s still with us and stable, and I’m really hoping this year won’t be as expensive.
Just to clarify, not one person in that thread has addressed the cost of medical care for their injured pet.
I also think that jumping from $1000 to unlimited is ridiculous. Most important is the prognosis as many posters have said. I’m not paying for a kidney transplant for an elderly cat with kidney failure. However, I did shell out about $3000 for Boris after the infamous penny-eating incident. However, this was a two year old healthy cat who went from being completely normal one day to vomiting bile the next. When we did the X-ray and found the problem it was sort of a no-brainer for me. Sure, I could easily replace him with another, smarter, less goat-like cat (the other day he was vomiting up the feather he apparently ate off his toy) but he probably has 10-15 healthy happy years left, when I adopted him I assumed responsibility for keeping him healthy and happy within reasonable means, and most important, a new cat would not be Boris. He’s not a human and he won’t be treated as agressively as a human family member but he’s still family. Five years later, I’m still very glad I paid the money for the furry little monster.
I put the $1,000 to unlimited amount, because from my point of view, a $1,000 on a cat is a ridiculous amount of money. I personally voted up to $100, just because I’m not a callous son of a bitch, and if one of our mousers got injured, I’d be willing to spend that much to fix him up.
And as much as some folks in this thread want to call into question my intention of this thread, I think I’ve been pretty straight forward. Animals are property and yes they should be cared for and not abused, but there’s a limit to my continued investment in their existence. And, I’m apparently not the only one that thinks so.
For those that so clearly announced their intention to not vote or to not continue discussing items in this thread, well thanks, I guess, but it wasn’t really necessary. You could have just bypassed the thread. Should we expect some sort of announcement when you decide to no longer post on the SDMB as well? If so, I guess we’ll hear from you then.
shrug Everybody has a limit. Mine is a lot higher than yours for a pet ( I’m assuming you’d place the same price on a pet dog? ), but like I said I can afford it and I have an emotional investment in them which is worth some money to me. If a cat to you is an easily replaceable working animal that you have no particular feeling for, I can understand your priorities being different.
Though I might add that strictly from a cold financial POV, adopting from a shelter in my area typically costs ~$100. So the replacement cost out here isn’t always zero.
You started out implying that anyone that would spend a lot of money on a cat is crazy. You then put up a poll essentially requesting that people that like cats answer a poll designed to show how crazy they are.
Of course there are other people that wouldn’t spend much money on a cat. There are people that value money vastly more than a pet cat. If they have that attitude and still choose to own a cat, I wouldn’t have anything to do with them either.
Not only are you a callous SOB, but you’re aggressively so, implying that people are crazy to care about their cats. Even if they were purely inanimate property, there is such a thing as sentimental value.
I think people that treat animals like humans aren’t right in the head.
If my cat was injured, I wouldn’t even pay for the shot to put it to sleep.
There is a middle ground between “cannot comprehend why anyone gives a shit about animals” and “treat animals exactly like people.” Personally, I don’t think either extreme is “right in the head.”
A couple years ago one our cats got some kind of weird eye/face infection. It went blind and was looking pretty bad. Only cost me 50 cents to fix the situation.
I dropped 4000 bucks on a kitten who had the bad luck to pick up panleukopenia two days before he was due to get his shots. That cat is still fat and happy and living with my ex-husband seven years later, showing no signs of slowing down.
I also spent 50 bucks having my beloved cat of over a decade euthanised three months ago, because the alternative was continuous steroid shots and a (probably pointless) abdominal surgery.
So, y’know, it depends.
Thanks for you input. Contrary to your opinion, I put up the poll to see the spectrum of people on the Dope and their opinions about the subject in the OP. That’s sort of the reason for the polling function here.
I don’t recall calling anyone crazy for their opinions. The most aggregious thing I said in this thread is that spending that kind of money on a cat was ridiculous. CrazyCatLady is responsible for her own username and contrary to popular belief, I didn’t give it to her.
It’s apparent that you have a low tolerance for people that don’t share your opinion. I bet you are a blast at parties and family gatherings.
Here’s the thing: you say you posted this poll so that you could hear others’ opinions. Me, I have an opinion on it, and I’d be happy to give it to you, even though it’s a little redundant now. I feel, as many others do, that it depends entirely on the situation - the age of the cat, the prognosis, my current income, and so on. Unfortunately, there’s no option in the poll that expresses this.
I certainly *would *- and have - spent more than $1000. I do not think cats are “replaceable”, any more than the handmade heirloom quilt made for you by your grandmother (middle eastern or otherwise) is “replaceable”. Sure, you can get another quilt that serves the same function, but there’s an emotional attachment that, once lost, cannot be regained. But I understand that some folks don’t feel this way about cats - I don’t feel that way about, say, gerbils, or an ant farm. However, much as my cats mean to me, I would *not *spend an unlimited amount, and do not think cats are the same as people. So I can’t vote.
Unfortunately, this makes it seem that it doesn’t actually matter to you what my opinion is, because I’ve spent beyond what you consider to be a “ridiculous” amount of money, and so there’s no difference to you between me and someone who treats pets like people. I think that’s why people are accusing you of being disingenuous. You’ve structured the poll in a way that doesn’t allow for what seems to be a very common, if not *the *most common, response so far: It depends. Instead, people can only weigh in on what their absolute dollar limit is - and many of us just don’t have one, as such.
I once spent $1,100 on a dying cat, who croaked anyway, despite my vet’s best efforts. I blame the vet, whom I think was a moneygrubbing whore. She spent about 12 hours one day trying to keep this cat alive. The cat was in major organ failure. Had the vet called me after a couple hours and said, “Look, we can spend a thousand dollars but she’s dying anyway and she’ll just suffer while we try to keep her limping along, or you can come in and say goodbye and save a grand.”
It was a random stray cat I’d taken in, who bit everyone who tried to pet her (including me). I’d have put the cat down so neither one of us suffered all day. In the end, it wasn’t so much the money, but all the poking and prodding and IVs and treatments she endured all day while she was just trying to die peacefully… poor kitty. I will never do that again to a pet. It’s not about the money to me; it’s about the animal’s chance of recovery to its previous quality of life.
Let me add this, because it sounds like I was one of those pet owners who won’t let the pet go.
My vet was not very communicative while she had my cat. I never heard a diagnosis or a prognosis. I didn’t even know what was wrong with the cat except her liver and kidneys were shutting down. That sounded like the end to me, but the vet kept telling me things she could “try.” She never offered me the option of a box of ashes and a kitten. Nor did she give me a detailed estimate for the tab she was running up.
I left that vet and took my remaining three pets to another one in town who has never gouged me like that.
This doesn’t really make sense. I can make a new friend any time I go out (People seem to like me!) but that wouldn’t keep me from trying to save a friend’s life.
Maybe that’s why people like me!