I can't afford my vet bill

Put to sleep if no PDSA. If you have no spare money, paying on credit card will adversely affect your children. We love our cat but ffs, it is a cat and not a dc.

I have always felt that responsibility as a pet owner is to make sure your pet has the best life while living with you and doesn't suffer needlessly. That sometimes means that medical treatment, which may be available but may not be in their best interests, is refused.
You don't have to be prepared to do anything it takes to keep a pet alive to be a good pet owner as long as your pet doesn't suffer.
Pets are not human - they don't worry about dying although they may notice loss. They don't understand that the horrible things that happen to them when unwell are to make them better.
If you cannot afford expensive tests then you have to make the decision which is kindest to your pet.
However you may actually just have a crap vet and I hope the new ones help more.

Petplan are the only company worth getting insurance with as they are the only ones the pay out without arguing and stalling. They paid for my cat to have a GA and some teeth removed which cost £800 (he's unlucky and has not had very good teeth from birth).

Good luck for your wee cat, I hope everything works out

I agree with this poster. It is sad but your children come first. 🌷

You mentioned a random payment came out of your account related to insurance - was that before or after you cancelled? Is there any chance it may have been after and be the remainder of the years contract up front (in which case you may still have insurance in place until the end of the policy year?)

This.

i changed insurers and the procedure wasnt covered.
however it was a procedure, not purely investigations.
you dont have to get yourself into so much debt op.

that is an awful lot of money for investigations.
if you cannot afford it then no investigations.

OK, it was really just to help rule in/out what might be wrong. Your vet will be aware of that anyway - I hope she recovers soon.

Oh, bless you! These things always happen when you go to change insurer, don’t they?

I’m so sorry your cat is ill - it’s stressful enough just worrying about the poor thing without worrying about paying for it as well.

Honestly though, this sounds pretty par for the course with vets…I love our vets, they’re amazing and have literally saved both our cats’ lives at some point but 90% of the time they have no clue what’s wrong so they eliminate what isn’t wrong through a series of increasingly expensive tests. Our insurance has taken such a pounding over the last 7 years!

I hope your new vet finds out what’s wrong quickly and can put it right ❤️

Thanks for being corrected. I do appreciate you explaining where and why I’m "quite wrong". Your opinion matters.

Oh give it a rest

If you only cancelled insurance a few weeks ago are you sure it’s not still running til next payment would’ve been due

That is positive news. I hope your much loved cat makes a good recovery.

I’m glad you have managed to get help, PDSA, RSPCA & Blue Cross are all good shouts if on benefits and within a catchment area. As is Animal Trust if you have one nearby. I hope it turns out to be nothing too serious and your kitty can be helped.

Some of the suggestions on this thread are outrageous. All those suggesting asking for payment plans, I have worked in a vets and asking for payment plans just makes it awkward for everyone and as I understand it, from a legal stand point, vets aren’t technically allowed to issue them as it could come under financing regulations which would require them to be registered with the financial ombudsman as a lender etc which they are not and could potentially leave them on dodgy ground. Many who have previously bent the rules to help rather than see an animal suffer have been stung by people not paying as agreed. As a result there are very few out there that will do it these days, I don’t know of any, at best if you are a regular longstanding client with a history of always paying they will sometimes offer a half now the rest in 2-3 weeks grace period for an unexpected big bill. For those suggesting just not paying, it’s things like that that bump up costs for everyone else, not to mention they can and will take you to court / get bailiffs involved which is surely not worth the stress.

I don't mean to sound like the harbinger of doom OP. But you really shouldn't have cancelled the insurance no matter how shit they were. Or you should have replaced it at least 2 weeks before taking her to the vet.
If her illness turns out to be a chronic condition you'll be stuck paying for it. We had this with our rescue girl, she has feline IBS and requires special food etc which can get quite expensive. As first time cat owners we were naive, luckily we can afford it but won't be making the same mistake with our next one.

You need to decide that max that can be afforded - talk to rescues etc. blood rets for example can be quite expensive at £200 a pop.

@frazzledbutcalm getting a pet is not about feelings of what one 'should' or 'shouldn't' do but simple arithmetic. Treatment is expensive , if you can't pay animals don't get treatment. They get PTS for anything complex as happened 20+ years ago.

It's ridiculous to say that 'poor people shouldn't reproduce, we have benefits etc for children who are human beings. Not animals. And I wouldn't be happy to pay for the latter, so what's the solution?

Buying animals because it gives them a high … are you high?? What a stupid comment. Does that also include homeless people whose dogs actually keep them alive?

90 seems a lot for just a consultation. I paid 83 yesterday for a consultation, flea treatment and steroid jab. It was a new vet place to me but they were lovely and will be her vet from now on.

She didn't buy this animal she rescued it from a shelter. Which on the whole are overcrowded with too many animals for only the affluent to be able to adopt.

Accept that people with different means will take on shelter animals, or they remain in wholly inadequate overcrowded conditions or that large scale euthanasia of these animals has to take place. It's that simple.

Edit: we are not talking about food or shelter or basic care, but of the ability to provide expensive medical care to artificially extend an animals natural life, if it is even possible to do so(!). Equally the OP is going to do her best and her lovely moggy may be absolutely fine (fingers crossed).

£90 for a further consultation sounds really steep under the circumstances. I'm pleased that you have some support sorted out. Fingers crossed things improve by the morning. I saw a different vet recently who wanted to put my elderly dog on regular injections, she still jumps up and runs upstairs. He wasn't the slightest bit interested in the real reason I had made the appointment. Needless to say I declined.

I wouldn't get the bloods and scans done I can only imagine what comes after that. £1k could end up being the tip of a very big ice berg. Please don't get into debt when you're on low income and have kids to look after. I've had vets try to get me to have all kinds in the past and my animals have perked up a few days later!