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Doomed... [sigh]

Nedreud

Nedreud

Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2013
Messages
3,092
Location
Aldershot, UK
So I was just thinking on Friday how everything was generally peachy with my life. My wife and I spent the afternoon lounging in the garden... it was very hot ;) The kids are healthy and happy at school. We've got a nice holiday and days out planned over the summer. I finally made it to Special When Lit and I'm actually getting somewhere with my Paragon restoration. And to top it all the number at the bottom of this months bank statement was actually a pleasure to read.

But then last night the next door neighbour calls to say he's found our cat in his garden and he's making blood curdling noises...

Turns out some terrible fate has befallen Mr Abner Brown and he's somehow fractured his pelvis and gashed his leg open. The most likely explanation is he took a big fall onto concrete. Luckily for him our vet uses http://www.fitzpatrickreferrals.co.uk/ as their referral centre. Yep, none other than The Supervet of Channel 4 fame: http://www.thesupervet.com/

He's there already and will be having his operation tomorrow to screw his pelvis back together. My wife's a veterinary nurse so she'll be handling the 6 weeks of cage rest at home that is the first part of his recovery.

All I can say is thank God for pet insurance. The emergency overnight stay on Saturday was £1,200 and the op will be £3,000. The insurance will cover most but not all of it so any hope I might of had of winning that 1977 Bally Lost World on eBay next week has long vanished :(

I think I might need 6 weeks of cage rest soon!
 
Yep, £1200. Out-of-hours emergency vet. Overnight stay, etc., etc. We're so used to the NHS you don't realise how expensive medicine is. If you had to pay when you went to A&E you'd easily be presented with a bill for thousands each time.
 
abaxas said:
Good to see the cat is fine but f me, we are all in the wrong jobs. 4K+ to fix a cat :O
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Yeah, I know. It sounds like a real money earner but the cost of running a surgical vet business is massive. 24 hour operation so you have to pay highly trained and qualified staff for night work, 24 hour buildings operation, drugs such as anaesthetics are really expensive as is the equipment and the regular servicing and maintenance (would you have an operation if you knew the equipment wasn't regularly tested?). Surgery gets through piles of consumables such as scalpels, drips, swabs, blood(!), etc., and it all needs cleaning and the entire room sterilising before the next op. Then there's tests, scans, x-rays. None of it is cheap and that's where the money goes.

I'm lucky as my wife can do all the post-op palliative care that most folks would have to pay for too.
 
I hope the cat gets better soon.
I got a £7500 vet bill once! :eek:
Insurance covered a lot of it but now the dog's insurance is more expensive than the policies on our 2 cars added together!!
 
Nedreud said:
Yeah, I know. It sounds like a real money earner but the cost of running a surgical vet business is massive. 24 hour operation so you have to pay highly trained and qualified staff for night work, 24 hour buildings operation, drugs such as anaesthetics are really expensive as is the equipment and the regular servicing and maintenance (would you have an operation if you knew the equipment wasn't regularly tested?). Surgery gets through piles of consumables such as scalpels, drips, swabs, blood(!), etc., and it all needs cleaning and the entire room sterilising before the next op. Then there's tests, scans, x-rays. None of it is cheap and that's where the money goes..
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Agree with this. I looked into becoming a vet when I went through a career change recently, and I think the vets themselves are actually quite underpaid in comparison to the duration of their training (say, comparing an experienced vet with an experienced medical Dr) and the amount of money someone with their level of intelligence/exam grades could make in other fields (e.g. a Dr. or a management consultant or something). I guess a practice owner probably does very well, but I think vets themselves are compromising; doing someone they really want to do versus remuneration.
 
Also finding a good vet is hard.

Me and the wife adopt 'recycled' hamsters and we found a great vet who charges £6 a visit for any small fluffy animal. They do it as they know if they charged full price people simply wouldn't take the mini fluffies :(
 
Find the positive, Mr Abner Brown will be coming home and you will share his life for a while longer. The rest is all money and I see that if we have it to spend, then there is not really a serious problem. Not having the money, but really needing it, is far more painful.
 
Times really have changed - I once had a labrador that swallowed a whole box of sewing pins.

Straight to the vets (this is out of hours in the evening), aneathatist called in and an emergency operation to dig the whole lot out of her stomach.

£30

That was back in the 70's and yes, the value of £30 has changed a lot. But not to 4K
 
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Wow! £30? That was good value! Assuming the year was 1970 then £30 is the equivalent of £405 today. My current £4,200 bill would have been £311 back in 1970, somewhere along the line costs have increased ten times! Sign of the times, I guess...
 
Nice to see a lot of positive animal comments on here though :)

Surprised no one has mentioned the Bally Lost World on eBay though... I want it SO BAD! Would look just awesome sat next to Paragon - it's kinda like Paragon's little kid brother ;)
 
It was later than 1970, can't remember exact year. I reckon we paid maybe £300 in today's terms. But it was a straight in-and-out job, no overnight stay and the op was done pretty quick.

I hope your cat gets back to 100%
 
Could always go PDSA? Just turn up stinking of p*ss, dressed in faeces and its all FREE!!!

On a serious note, VETS4PETS recently saved the greatest cat I ever had. for the whopping sum of just £130. He got poisoned by a mouse he ate, and lost the abilty to walk. I thought he was a gonner, but after some bloodwork, antibiotics and a potassium injection he came back to life like a miracle. He's now 100% fighting fit. He spent 2 days in their care and that's the bill I got.

In all honesty, if it were twenty times that price I would have paid it. Some vets prey on that I know but you just cant put a price on a pets life if you love them enough.
 
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Rus121 said:
Could always go PDSA? Just turn up stinking of p*ss, dressed in faeces and its all FREE!!!

On a serious note, VETS4PETS recently saved the greatest cat I ever had. for the whopping sum of just £130. He got poisoned by a mouse he ate, and lost the abilty to walk. I thought he was a gonner, but after some bloodwork, antibiotics and a potassium injection he came back to life like a miracle. He's now 100% fighting fit. He spent 2 days in their care and that's the bill I got.

In all honesty, if it were twenty times that price I would have paid it. Some vets prey on that I know but you just cant put a price on a pets life if you love them enough.
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Shame it's not so simple with antifreeze poisoning my mum lost 2 cats that way
 
My cat Jess had to be put down with kidney disease 2 weeks ago. A sad day. But now we have a new tormentor of mice and birds and chupa-chup wrappers: Master Obi-Wan Kenobi...

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Nice moggy you got there.

As for kidney issues, i was told by my vet to change his diet considerably and not feed either of my cats the processed crap I had been for years. That includes 95% of the wet food, and 99% of the dry that's available in every shop in the UK. Its all crap with huge amounts of kidney damaging phosphorous.

They now eat only iams, and good meats, mostly white. The change in them both is/was incredible. Both cats are brothers from the same litter, 12 years old now and you would think they were half that.
 
Yup, he's a Bengal @RudeDogg1. And agree about the cat food @Rus121. Jess was 14 so did pretty well on Whiskers, but my dog has Eukanuba and Obi has been brought up on sliced chicken breast and some stuff that looks like raw minced beef...the breeder gave me some "Royal Canin" dried food for kittens when I picked him up too - he was less than impressed with a bowl of that.
 
JT. said:
Yup, he's a Bengal @RudeDogg1. And agree about the cat food @Rus121. Jess was 14 so did pretty well on Whiskers, but my dog has Eukanuba and Obi has been brought up on sliced chicken breast and some stuff that looks like raw minced beef...the breeder gave me some "Royal Canin" dried food for kittens when I picked him up too - he was less than impressed with a bowl of that.
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bengals are beautiful my mum has a lovely spotted snow bengal
 
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Wow! Lovin' the cat love on here today!!!

Lovely Bengal @JT. A friend of mine has one and an Abyssinian. Both mental.

@Rus121, my wife trained and qualified as a veterinary nurse at the PDSA. Proper surgical nursing, anaesthetics, x-rays, etc. She used to love it, different every day (the PDSA only provide emergency treatment - no regular stuff like fleas or vaccines, so very interesting).

We currently have 3 cats: Mog, a jet black female moggy, Abner, a half Siamese who looks just like an Havana Brown and tips the scales at just over 6kg, and our latest addition, Atticus Whimseerex Leaky Cauldron, a pedigree red tabby Devon Rex. Due to get number four in a few weeks, another moggy from my sister-in-law.

MOG: a bit simple but cute as a button
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ABNER BROWN: as genuinely evil as his namesake
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ATTICUS WHIMSEEREX LEAKY CAULDRON: muppet
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We bought him a cat tree which is proving entertaining for him (and us)! Bungie mice are awesome. You can see the stuffed rat stalking him on the podium above.

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