I’m sorry that you feel that you can’t share your opinion with someone that is most likely going to disagree with you. As with any poll, everyone has the option to post a comment clarifying…kind of like you just did.
In my own experience, very seldom, are polls on the Dope designed 100% perfect to account for every potential answer or point of view. Hell, I’m not a professional poll writer.
Thanks for you input.
I guess it doesn’t make sense for you. I just don’t see cats in the same way.
I take care of my cats. They are fed and watered. They have a warm place to sleep. They are not abused, tortured, etc. They even get petted and held every once in a while. They’ve even got names. Pretty much the same as the livestock we own. But like the cows, they don’t come in the house, they don’t sleep on the furniture, they don’t climb up on the kitchen counters.
I voted not a dime because I have experience of several “no it’s perfectly routine, just a day or two more, we need to take more x-rays, she’ll need antibiotics, it would be better if we kept her here, we seem to have missed something, there are a few complications, well you’re already up for…” situations and could happily live without the “what a fuckwit am I” feeling you get when you take home your extremely expensive mongrel cat/dog.
Here’s the thing – maybe you can go get another cat for free, sure. But to a pet owner, that doesn’t equal “replacing” it.
A few years ago, our cat Cuervo died. We have two other cats now, but that doesn’t mean Cuervo has been replaced. He’s gone, he’s never coming back, and we miss him. He wasn’t some random critter living in our yard; he was our pet. If you don’t get the distinction, that’s fine, but I think it’s key to understanding why people spend money on animals.
No, of course pets don’t equal people. Cuervo’s kidneys were failing. We could have gotten him a series of expensive treatments. They may have extended his life by a few months, maybe a year at the most, and he probably would have been miserable the whole time. So we didn’t do it. But I’m in a position to understand why somebody else would have.
And if it had been possible to actually cure his condition and give him some healthy, quality years, we almost certainly would have paid money to do so – though it’s impossible to set an amount in a vacuum, so I didn’t answer the poll.
I pay £9/month in pet insurance, which covers up to £6,500 in vet fees.
I said less than 500 dollars but it’s probably closer to 200, mostly because I’m poor. If I was wealthy I’d spend whatever it took to either save or ease the pain if they couldn’t be saved. I’ve had to put down cats I couldn’t afford to have treated. It’s not about them being easy to replace. I have a freebie too, but our relationship is different. He’s outdoors most of the time and I only have him because the neighbors dumped him and moved. I like him but the only thing I’ve paid for or plan to pay for is getting him neutered and tagged.
My indoor cats are different. They’re the fourth generation of a family I’ve considered part of my own family for the past 10 years. I do love them as much as anyone can love an animal. And they do earn their keep! As soon as I lay down on my belly on the bed I get free cat massages. At night one curls up at my feet and the other at my chest (the dog steals the spot behind my curved legs) to keep me warm. They are constant sources of amusement and all I have to do is meow and they both come running.
Both of them were born with nystagmus though, in addition to skin conditions and flea allergies. I can’t afford the steroid treatment for the skin conditions, I can only keep them safe because they’re blind. I try to keep them clean and use the expensive flea meds because one bite causes them unbearable itching and then hair loss but they still both have what they call “rodent mouth” and have tooth loss that could probably be treated with the right meds. I do what I can. But if one gets sick I probably won’t be able to afford more than a dx plus euthanasia if that’s what’s required. It wouldn’t be an easy thing to do though because I do love them.
No I mean that doesn’t make sense as an analogy.
I understand not everyone treats cats the same, believe me. Where my SO comes from they shoot cats on sight. They’re considered vermin like rats. He has nothing but disdain for my kitties and would gladly get rid of them if I let him. It took me a long time to understand that, because I was raised to care for my animals and other animals too. Even the barn cats. Even a hurt dog you might see in the street. I have no idea if this was limited to cats and dogs though.
Yeah, around my place, cats are free. You can’t drive down the road, without seeing signs for free kittens about every half mile. It’s a shame that more people don’t take responsibility for the breeding of their animals. But it’s the world we live in.
I’m guessing some of you guys wouldn’t consider me a pet owner.
Um??? The first quoted post above wasn’t an analogy. It was a statement of fact and opinion.
Just a note: chemo treatment for cats is different from treatment for humans (and perhaps dogs too, though I can’t speak from personal experience about that). The point with an animal isn’t to give them enough medication to try and kill the cancer, and thereby make the patient so sick and miserable they half-wish they were dead before it’s done, but smaller doses that improve their condition and quality of life.
My cat has been taking 2 mg of chlorambucil every other day for the past year–a pill I can’t touch with my bare hands, and have to wear gloves and use a pill gun to give her. When she was diagnosed with lymphoma last January, I was afraid that meant I would have to put her to sleep right away. Now, her appetite’s improved so that she’s gained 3 pounds (which is a lot for a small kitty), stopped vomiting every damn day, become more active again, and has a prognosis of at least another year. She’s not in pain and except for having to take the pills, is not unhappy. The vets are impressed with how well she’s doing. Eventually, they tell me, her liver or kidneys will fail and that will be the time to let her go.
The pills don’t cost that much–at least as far as I’m concerned. $140 for about a 10-week supply.
I’ve spent more (much more than $1000) on my other cat, who had pancreatitis about 3 1/2 years and is now diabetic. But she’s doing fine and I’m not sorry I spent the time, effort, or money on her life either.
But, see, it wasn’t the “free” part of your sentence I was commenting on, but the “replace” part. I can get all the free cats I want, but good ol’ Cuervo will never be replaced. That was my point.
I completely agree that people should be more responsible about breeding. And it’s a commendable thing to give those free cats a good home, and I’m not saying you don’t treat your cats well.
But, yeah, maybe having cats as farm animals isn’t the same as keeping them as pets. No right and wrong there, just different.
It cost about $300 to have my cat humanely euthanized. That’s on the high side, since it’s NYC and the vet made a house call. All the same, putting a cat down costs money, apparently more money than you think. I would be incredibly surprised if the bill from a euth came below $100, unless your large animal vet did it while visiting on a farm call on an unrelated matter. Shee-it, my large animal vet did the barn cats rabies shots, and it was still $35 per (rural virginia). As your barn cats aren’t vaccinated or fixed, I guess you wouldn’t know what that costs either.
However I hope you don’t just “leave them to die” if you notice your barn cats obviously in distress. I’m sure you’d put a cow out of its misery as best you could, if it was suffering. You would do that, wouldn’t you?
There’s nothing really wrong with barn cats in a state of benign neglect. It beats a lot of fates out there for cats. But no, nothing about your relationship with your cats, signifies that they are your pets.
I have to say this: I’ve never understood the love/hate feelings most people have about cats. It’s weird to me that very few people occupy the middle ground. While it’s acceptable for someone to be neutral on dogs ("eh - they’re nice. Take 'em or leave 'em), it’s never the same way for cats. People tend to either like/love cats or to hate them. In my experience, very few people are neutral on cats. I don’t get this.
I love cats. I have two. Unlimited amounts of money? No, I won’t spend that on my cats. My view is much like Tamerlane’s - depending on prognosis, I’ll spend what I feel able to at the time. I’ve spent $1000+exam fees and such on a thyroid radiation treatment for my 16 year old kitty. It worked, but it turns out that her kidneys were failing, so we had her put to sleep about 7 or so months later. Absolutely no regrets. Her quality of life was good, and we both enjoyed those last months. Would I do it again? I don’t know - I now have that experience to draw from. In the same position, I’d maybe do some more testing to determine what shape the cat’s kidneys were in before proceeding with the thyroid treatment.
I’m not really a dog person. I like dogs, and I’ll pet and play with the dogs my friends or family members have, but I don’t think that being a dog owner is for me. While I understand where the “I’d never spend as much on a cat as on a dog” sentiment comes from, I don’t agree with it. I guess I wish that dog owners could see that my cats are worth as much and mean as much to me as their dogs do to them. But most won’t, and I find that a little sad.
Many of you have commented on the replacement value concept of my point of view. I’m not a real sentimental guy. Sure, there are a few things like family photos, home movies, etc. that to me are irreplacable. But with digitizing and back-up hard drives, it will take a pretty good disaster for me to lose that stuff. Everything else are really just objects, whether it was my grandmother’s quilt or the tabby cat out in the barn.
This may be up for debate, but I don’t believe that animals themselves have emotions like love. Any sort of familial feelings there are ones that we attribute to them. Just like the sentamental feeling we attribute to a quilt or other object. Everybody is entitled to render up whatever emotion they want to their things. It’s just that as people have stated, there is a wide spectrum of the type of emotion that different people render towards cats, from believing that they are family members to, as Rushgeekgirl stated, shooting them on sight.
Of course. I’m not the callous SOB, that AlienVessels claims I am, even though he’s never met me.
I would say I’m pretty neutral on cats. What gave you the impression that I hate them?
One big reason why we don’t have cats or dogs is that I don’t want to have to spend hundreds on vet bills. I don’t have the money, and I wouldn’t want to spend it on kidney treatments for a cat if I did.
The biggest reason we don’t have any indoor pets, is the damage they do to your homes. Probably a greater cost than any potential medical needs they might incur.
I’ve spent over a grand for an operation for at least two of our cats. I wouldn’t have done so if it meant I had to declare bankruptcy or if it was just prolonging a painful death, but they made full recoveries and will live normal cat lifespans, and I had the money. They’re not members of my family by any stretch, but they’re not exactly desk lamps, either. Their only job is brightening my day when I come home and keeping my wife happy, and they do a fine job of it, so I was okay with spending some scratch to have them around a little longer. Is it a waste of money? Maybe, but who cares? I have gearhead friends that will spend $5000 on a vintage guitar that to me doesn’t seem to have a tone any better than an $800 Japanese replica, but they say they can tell a difference, it makes them happy, and it’s their money. Most people probably spend money on stuff that the next guy couldn’t give two shits about.
So true.