Mumsnet Talk

I've had my cat 14 years, always been insured, but now it's costing me £30 pm and it seems everything she has is not covered .
They're not covering her hyperthyroidism because i should have known she had it the year before (long dull story where they eventually paid £100).
I've just taken her for a check up as she needed more tablets and they wouldn't prescribe without a blood test. So today cost £159, as I knew it would.
Vet spots a rotten tooth - she needs it taken out - this is going to be a whopping £268 - thats AFTER a 50% discount if I get it done in January.
I could cry
I love her to bits, but I simply do not have that kind of cash and of course, it's not covered by the insurance. I'm also trying to teach my kids that just because someone something you love is old, cranky and expensive doesn't mean you get rid of it
I'm seriously thinking about cancelling it and using the £30 pm to cover the tablets.
Any happy stories of having an uninsured cat????

Not a cat, but we cancelled insurance for our dog as never needed it. She then had an emergency c section on a bank holiday then emergency hysterectomy on a Sunday the next year

I don't have insurance - but my recent cats have been too old to be covered (or at any rate to be covered without dirty great big exclusion clauses) and they've mostly been house cats - so no chance of RTAs. It's a gamble. I've had to pay up for an expensive dental and Seniorboy is now on meds which cost me about £30 a month.

Broadly speaking I'm ahead on pure money but if I had a much younger cat, I'd definitely be taking our a policy after shopping around.

Your call, I'm afraid.

Oh, I know it's my call, I'm a very cautious person financially and I genuinely worry about not being covered, but the cost/benefit doesn't seem to be there at the moment.

Is there a cheaper practice? I go to one in a less than desirable area but its the practice we used for my childhood cats and they are excellent clinically.

Cousins vets is in Bournemouth, £75 to neuter a Tom. We only spent £40 ish.

That's a good point fluffy I shall phone around, they are lovely but it's getting ridiculous.
If I find another practice that will do the dental work for less than the 50% discount rate the current one offers I shall cry as well - at the thought of how much I will have overspent with my loyalty over the last 14 years!

Mine went up to that amount. So swapped it to the cheapest pet plan (let's face it life long care isn't going to be as costly for them as it is a kitten) which was £12 a month. Then transfer £12 a month into a savings account to cover any vet stuff.
Not been brave enough to cancel it totally but feel this is a wiser way to deal with it

I cancelled mine when the cat got to about 13 years old.

Because of the excess I needed the vet bill to be £70 in order to receive £6 back from the insurer and after 3 bills of £70 or less I bit the bullet and cancelled.

I set up a savings account and put the £35 ish a month the insurance cost in and there is about £500 now and I dip into it for any vets bills, usually £30 a go.

I cancelled my insurance for my labs when they got to 10 years old as the insurance decided to not insure any disease of the heart or anything to do with bones, luckily i did not need it. However the pet insurance for my spaniel has just paid out £1500 following knee surgery and our now deceased cats insurance paid out £2000 after a cornial skin graft for an ulcer on the eye ball, so.......maybe a savings account is a good idea and if you don't use it go shopping

Our dog hasn't been insured since she was 3 when we moved abroad to a country where pet insurance didn't exist. We moved back to UK when she was 7 and never bothered getting quotes, she's now nearly 12. Not insuring her has definitely been the cheaper option, despite several minor emergencies.

We don' t have insurance for our cat, he is about two years old. So far, so good. We will just have to hope he isn' t expensive if he does get ill. My DM had two cats and a dog and never had any insurance, and despite some small ops that the dog needed,she saved money overall. We can' t afford insurance atm so are keeping our fingers crossed...

£268 to remove a rotten tooth is very expensive. My Labrador had a rotten tooth removed last August and all her remaining teeth cleaned for £115. The vet is in a nice area of Bournemouth but has always been very reasonable so much so we cancelled her insurance when she was 9, she's now 12 and save the money spent on insurance into an account.

I stopped mine about 2 years ago we just could afford it anymore

Touch wood the dog hasn't needed any medical treatment thus far

We downgraded... And typically, 3 days later our cat has been diagnosed with IBS and a heart murmur both of which the vet wants to investigate further. Stupidly we forgot to read the small print before taking her to the vet- and no conditions diagnosed within 14 days will be covered. So, we are having to cross our fingers that neither is too severe, as we do not have the money for either investigation...

it might sound harsh but I never insure my pets, we rehome moggies & mongrels who are part of the family. I look after them as well as I can, all the usual routine care costs, but if the bill is going to be more than a few hundred and/or put them through unaturally long treatments I have always said I'd rather they didn't suffer.

If one of mine had an accident requiring major reconstructive surgery I couldn't do it, I'd rather put them put out of their agony.

I've had to let one beloved boy go under anaesthetic when they discovered cancer and my 21 year old moggy had several £100 spent on her on only 2 occasions in her long life, both times for basic tests to diagnose & then treat her kidney problems. She died just short of her 22nd birthday.

Just MHO obviously.