Pricing a Pet's Life and Other Moral Considerations
This weekend, I experienced the life-changing emotional rollercoaster better known as the Emergency Visit to the Veterinarian. Apparently, these visits can be costly. Unless your pet needs only shots or a one-way ticket to barrenville, you find yourself faced with the inevitable moral question: do I pay for this or put the animal down?
My cat started rollin' around with a ghetto stroll late last week. He put no weight at all on his left front leg and was hopping around very sadly. I called the vet, and they had me bring him in. Initially, my kitty was too freaked out (read: pissed off and ready to scratch) to get thoroughly looked at, so I had to leave him there overnight, to get put under anesthesia and x-rayed. Before we knew what the problem was, the vet and I discussed worst case scenario. Apparently, worst case scenario was about $2500 for a fracture requiring surgery. I gasped at this estimate. I don't have $2500. Like, at all. I had gone to the vet prepared to dish out up to $700 - the amount I have left in my budget after rent and using all available free space on my credit cards. Of course, I knew that if it came down to it, I would probably ask around and try to borrow the money from anyone I could...
On the surface, this may seem nice and the good pet owner thing to do. However, my motivations were not at all centered on caring about the well-being of my cat. Frankly, my cat pisses me off, he is snobby and lazy. He will wake me at 3 in the morning if his water hasn't been changed in the past six hours. I find him to have the worst traits of males and females: he is too proud, too winy, too dramatic, too self-centered. On the whole, he's a little bitch and I would have been glad to have lost him in the divorce. The thing is, my daughter loves this cat - and she would have been devastated if I told her we would have to get him put down. Furthermore, she senses that I am not too fond of him, and would have thought I couldn't care that he was put to sleep. Fact is, she's kinda right, I couldn't have cared too much if he got put to sleep, except the resulting belief my daughter would have that I was a cruel cat killer. And so, he was going to live, even if this required amputating the leg and renaming him Tripod.
But I knew, just knew, that if it weren't for my concerns for my daughter, I would have rather had the cat put down than spend $2500 on him. How awful is that? Is it ok because, relatively speaking, the cost would constitute 150% of my available finances? In those numbers, it sounds reasonable... Does it mean that I am an irresponsible pet owner for not having kitty health insurance? For getting a pet I couldn't afford pricey surgeries for?
I used to believe I had a strong, set system of morals. Apparently, my moral hierarchy is more fluid and situational than I thought. Ironic because that was one of my largest complaints with my ex-husband. If my daughter needed a $250,000 surgery, I would rob old women and make a deal with the devil, or even George Bush. Nothing short of my own death would be capable of deterring me. I would probably go about a quarter of those lengths if the lives of my brothers or sister were in question. I would probably put a dollar in a bucket at the grocery store to fund some nearly-dead three year old's bone marrow transplant. If a spider were limping like my cat, I would run and tell my daughter to get her bug vacuum so she could make observations with her magnifying glass before putting it out of its insectual misery. Is it wrong to make such distinctions in the value of life, based on my own personal emotional and physical relationships to the person/animal/noun involved? Does it speak negatively to my character that the value I placed on my cat's life was wholly relative to the sadness his death would cause my daughter?
I don't have the answers, but, wow, what an eye-opener.
In hindsight, I have the freedom to speak about these things honestly. Turns out the cat is fine, he probably sprung something or has some type of muscular injury. He's on pain meds, anti-inflammatories and house arrest. No big deal, he's just a cry ass. If he were in need of a 10k surgery I couldn't afford, and had to be put down, I would probably engage in some type of cognitive dissonance, convincing myself it was the only decision and not at all something to speak to my character. That would have been self-preserving bullshit, just another example of my own relativity.
My cat started rollin' around with a ghetto stroll late last week. He put no weight at all on his left front leg and was hopping around very sadly. I called the vet, and they had me bring him in. Initially, my kitty was too freaked out (read: pissed off and ready to scratch) to get thoroughly looked at, so I had to leave him there overnight, to get put under anesthesia and x-rayed. Before we knew what the problem was, the vet and I discussed worst case scenario. Apparently, worst case scenario was about $2500 for a fracture requiring surgery. I gasped at this estimate. I don't have $2500. Like, at all. I had gone to the vet prepared to dish out up to $700 - the amount I have left in my budget after rent and using all available free space on my credit cards. Of course, I knew that if it came down to it, I would probably ask around and try to borrow the money from anyone I could...
On the surface, this may seem nice and the good pet owner thing to do. However, my motivations were not at all centered on caring about the well-being of my cat. Frankly, my cat pisses me off, he is snobby and lazy. He will wake me at 3 in the morning if his water hasn't been changed in the past six hours. I find him to have the worst traits of males and females: he is too proud, too winy, too dramatic, too self-centered. On the whole, he's a little bitch and I would have been glad to have lost him in the divorce. The thing is, my daughter loves this cat - and she would have been devastated if I told her we would have to get him put down. Furthermore, she senses that I am not too fond of him, and would have thought I couldn't care that he was put to sleep. Fact is, she's kinda right, I couldn't have cared too much if he got put to sleep, except the resulting belief my daughter would have that I was a cruel cat killer. And so, he was going to live, even if this required amputating the leg and renaming him Tripod.
But I knew, just knew, that if it weren't for my concerns for my daughter, I would have rather had the cat put down than spend $2500 on him. How awful is that? Is it ok because, relatively speaking, the cost would constitute 150% of my available finances? In those numbers, it sounds reasonable... Does it mean that I am an irresponsible pet owner for not having kitty health insurance? For getting a pet I couldn't afford pricey surgeries for?
I used to believe I had a strong, set system of morals. Apparently, my moral hierarchy is more fluid and situational than I thought. Ironic because that was one of my largest complaints with my ex-husband. If my daughter needed a $250,000 surgery, I would rob old women and make a deal with the devil, or even George Bush. Nothing short of my own death would be capable of deterring me. I would probably go about a quarter of those lengths if the lives of my brothers or sister were in question. I would probably put a dollar in a bucket at the grocery store to fund some nearly-dead three year old's bone marrow transplant. If a spider were limping like my cat, I would run and tell my daughter to get her bug vacuum so she could make observations with her magnifying glass before putting it out of its insectual misery. Is it wrong to make such distinctions in the value of life, based on my own personal emotional and physical relationships to the person/animal/noun involved? Does it speak negatively to my character that the value I placed on my cat's life was wholly relative to the sadness his death would cause my daughter?
I don't have the answers, but, wow, what an eye-opener.
In hindsight, I have the freedom to speak about these things honestly. Turns out the cat is fine, he probably sprung something or has some type of muscular injury. He's on pain meds, anti-inflammatories and house arrest. No big deal, he's just a cry ass. If he were in need of a 10k surgery I couldn't afford, and had to be put down, I would probably engage in some type of cognitive dissonance, convincing myself it was the only decision and not at all something to speak to my character. That would have been self-preserving bullshit, just another example of my own relativity.
posted by Lex Fori at
2:38 PM
1 Comments:
Here's the flip side to the morality of expensive surgeries for pets - the consideration of the pain they will be put in as a resut of medical intervention.
We had a great cat whom we loved very much called Oreo. When he was only 5, he got sick and we kept whipping out the credit card because we wanted to save him. I can't remember the exact number, but between the $1500 surgery and the $500 ultrasound, plus the interim visits nad medicine, the number was around $2500 and was possibly higher.
In the end, the cat was in varying degrees of pain for about 8 weeks, then he died convuslsing on the floor. With all our good intentions, all we'd done was prolong his misery.
The difference between people and animals is that people have the capacity to understand what is happening to them. When someone is very ill with cancer, they can understand intellectually that the chemo and radiation treatments, though they make them feel worse in the short term, will help them in the long term. Animals don't have this capacity so all they feel is interminable, unreasonable pain.
We revised our animal care procedures after Oreo. We implemented a cap - $1000 - and set up an informal sliding scale of with pain, prognosis, and general temperment/age/condition of the animal as the considerations.
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-Ann, at 11:52 PM
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