. . . to not have pet insurance?

[RedPandaFluff]

We have two Maine Coons and they've been insured all their lives. They're now ten years old, which is getting on a bit for this particular breed, and the monthly insurance cost is going up from £60 to £85. Not only that, but even if we claim, there is a big excess (£150-£250) and we also pay 25% of the total vets bill, even if it's covered.

They're both in good health, no pre-existing conditions, neutered and indoor-cats only. Would I be mad to put the £85 in a savings account each month instead, and hope they don't get ill for at least a couple of years?

YABU - your cats will keel over the second they're not covered; get the insurance

YANBU - pet insurance is a racket and you should definitely risk it

@ntmdino have you worked out how much you’ve paid in premiums over the years?

I was told by a vet “ if you can afford to pay for your dog if it breaks its leg, you don’t need insurance”.

We don’t have it. I wouldn’t put a dog through chemo, so that also played a major part in our decision. My dog is now 11. We have had a couple of £200 bills, but nothing more so far.

My indoor cat had to be PTS recently age 15 and had been insured since she was a kitten. We only claimed in the last 3 months of her life.
If I got indoor kittens again I would save £50 each into a decent interest account instead of insuring.
We would have had £5k left over if we had done it this way with her.
Having said that we have the means to top the cat fund up if it runs out before they die.

A compromise might be to look at Accident only insurance - we did this for our older cat - it was much cheaper. We felt that if he'd had a serious illness at his age, we wouldn't put him through treatment but something like a broken leg we would have gone ahead with. All my animals are insured but I will stop with the full insurance when I feel the time is right and I wouldn't put them through a massive intervention. I did have 2 x 3.5k payouts (in the space of about 6 weeks for 2 different cats) from a few years back so I definately keep them insured as long as possible.

Also Dcat was PTS at home. She had one day where she was in a lot of pain from her arthritis and didn’t make her litter tray and I called a PTS at home specialist vet out the next day. She didn’t really examine her, but took my word for it. Our vet had seen her and x rayed which showed bad arthritis in both hips and spine and that was enough for me. I wasn’t having my baby girl in pain.

It's a debate we have been having.

Dog insurance went up by nearly £80 this time, from £120 to nearly £200 a month.

Max vet bills payable is £5k. So we are paying nearly £2.5k to get max £5k back.

We cancelled the insurance last week.

I am now slightly worried dog will do something stupid and incur a bill - but if we don't pay the insurance and it's less than £2.5k, then we are even. Plus we had an excess and they only paid out a percentage anyway, so even if we ended up paying £3k - £3.5k, we wouldn't be that much out of pocket.

But your cat is still young and the insurance covers £12k.

When your cat is twice that age, the insurance premiums are £80-£100 a month and because of her age the cover level drops to £6k with a £200 excess AND you are liable for 25% of all bills, it is a far less clear cut thing.

I always insure my cats when younger. Accidents, and health issues emerging, that is all covered.

By the time they are lazy sleepy couch potatoes who aren’t in the road, up a tree etc and who qualify for minimum cover, it’s frequently not worth it.

My two dogs are both insured (just renewed yesterday) with the highest cover we could get with an insurer linked to our vet which means we never have to pay up front as all claims are handled directly. We just like the peace of mind and although it's £160 a month for the two (plus another £68 for their vet health plans 😬) it is good personally for us as we definitely don't have the the money for large bills just sitting around.

The vet plan seems expensive but once you add up all the flea and work treatments, jabs, check ups, anal gland expressions etc plus free consultations for any concerns and an app to ask for advice it works out well for us.

I paid for pet insurance til the end for ddog. He racked up £25k in his last 4 years!
i think it depends partly on your attitude, whether they are indoor cats and their personalities. It was leg issues with ddog not illness

Yes.

The poster who says insurance will pay out up to £20k has a cracking good policy, because I have never had one with a max payout that high.

Someone with significant savings and a young cat might want to play the odds.

I wouldnt risk ot now that they are in their golden years and likely to decline in health.

Mine is 10k per year, lifetime policy but I just checked and they now do up to 11k

One of the cat people on here had a huge bill with Tesco (who I use) and they either paid out 10 or 20k.. can’t remember now

Found it, it was bills of 20k between 2 cats so same as my insurance

Vets often wont mention PTS if you insurance. You are a cash cow.

We had a very elderly cat and the vet wanted constant blood tests to monitor his kidney failure. I saw another vet, locum, and I said I wasn't prepared to keep having these blood tests, it wasn't fair to keep taking a 20 year old Cat to the vet ever 4 weeks. Locum completely agreed.

When the time obviously came to PTS, the original vet tried to suggest an overnight drip to perk him up for another couple of days.

We said no, and let him go with grace and dignity.

I wouldn’t drop it. Currently paying £41 a month for a 15 year old cat, but insurance are paying for £50 a month worth of medication along with blood tests every 2-3 months and any other treatment. They covered £700 worth of dental work last year. Who knows what in the 5-7 years he could live from now. We also pay the excess once per year for each condition and 20% of the treatment but it’s not dwindling our savings away like paying for everything would be.

If you can put your hands on both a large amount of cash (in the event of say, an accident) AND can afford a monthly outgoing of say a few hundred (in the event of a condition requiring ongoing medication), then maybe not.

As they get older, the premiums will go up because their risk goes up. That means the risk of you having to stump up costs also increases.

For Maine Coons I'd be concerned primarily about

● heart problems (few thousand for initial investigations and stabilising on medication, then monthly ongoing cost/6 monthly reviews)
● diabetes - as above, high initial outlay then ongoing medication
● Arthritis - ongoing medication
● kidney failure - again, inital outlay and then monthly costs
● Potential injury. Yes a house cat is unlikely to be hit by a car but there are a multitude of other accidents that can occur

And don't forget, that the above (and more!) possibilities don't necessarily occur in isolation, it's not unusual for older cats to have more than one ongoing condition. And you have two, presumably similarly aged, growing older together so that risk is doubled.

Personally, I'd always insure, but I'm also not rolling in spare cash.

Have you tried the comparison sites as suggested by Money Saving Expert/Martin Lewis?

My 18 year old Norwegian Forest Cat was chasing a scrunched up ball of paper around like a kitten one evening and then died overnight - never been ill in his life bar having some teeth removed. I never paid for pet insurance after having it for a few years with my dog - seriously, the hassle wasn't worth it - they did everything they could to not pay for anything. I put the money aside for my cat and never had to use it. I would love another wedgie or a Maine Coon.

Can we have a photo @RedPandaFluff ?

We have insurance now but a lot of the examples here where people needed it I’d have pts for the sake of the animal. I see too many people with animals who have had many treatments for things they shouldn’t have to suffer through and animals kept alive way too long and that die or are only put to sleep when they have a horrendous standard of living

My dog got hit by a car, and having insurance meant that when we took him to the vets I could just say “yes do it” to any investigative procedure they asked me about. Fortunately he wasn’t seriously hurt but if he was I could’ve taken any treatment option without worrying too much.

I understand why for an older dog it might feel like too much money, when it starts coming down to a question of quality of life but for the time being he is a member of our family and I need to know I won’t ever not treat him solely because of cost, so we’ll keep insuring him.

my cat developed thyroid, kidney arthritis and digestion issues, it cost us £3-4k but the medicines etc gave us an extra two years of good quality of life.

If they were moggies maybe, but I vote keep them insured OP. We've had four Maine Coons at various times over the years and so far all four of them have run up eye-watering vet bills (we're talking £2k and up), much higher than our moggies ever have. We'd have spent an absolute fortune on treatment by now if we weren't insured (albeit our insurers probably hate our guts 😄) and in fact could probably not have afforded to prolong our cats' lives as long as we have if we hadn't been insured. All four, to a greater or lesser extent, have had serious health conditions at one point or another, and in fact we only have one left as a result. They don't seem to be a very robust breed, I'm sure you know about the various conditions they're predisposed towards as they age. (Sorry, not trying to depress you - hopefully yours are healthier!)

That said, I agree the excesses/price hikes and all that co-pay malarkey are a major pain. And it probably helps that yours are indoor cats - we think one of ours picked up a toxin that compromised his kidneys, which of course is far more likely outdoors. That said, we lost one to cardiomyopathy and two to illnesses the vets were never able to properly diagnose. (Not exactly talking up Maine Coons here, am I rueful smile but they do seem to be an illness-prone breed.)

Having said all that, I really hope your fluffballs continue to be luckier with their health than ours have been!

I paid for my cat to have a overactive thyroid removal operation last year which cost me around £300. I paid for it on interest free credit spread out over a period of time.

If I'd been paying £60 a month pet insurance, I would have paid for her operation in 5 months, but probably would have ended up paying much more than that in the long run, over the years. IMO, I think pet insurance can be a racket.

We’ve never insured our cat. We agreed that if she ever had a condition which requires experience treatment we would have her PTS.

As it happens, blood tests showed she has some sort of liver problem. Further investigations are pointless, so we’re waiting until she doesn’t have any quality of life now.

Createausername1970 - I did not have pet insurance at that time.

We sadly lost our most recent cat at 13yrs old. She went from absolutely fine to maybe needing a couple of teeth out to actually no her liver values are high. Ultrasound showed she had gallstones and needed an operation to remove them and her gallbladder. Sadly just as they were stitching her up she had a cardiac arrest and CPR didn't work. This started on the Thursday and her op/death was the following Tuesday.

Her op and subsequent care post op was being talked about at between £7-10 grand. We have pet insurance thankfully.

5yrs ago she had an infection and again her bills reached just shy of £7grand.

Our previous two cats very quickly got kidney failure (one died at 13.5yrs with 95% and the other was diagnosed with 75% and lived for another 4mths at 14yrs - only because her heart murmur got worse). Their combined bills came to just shy of £5grand (this was 11yrs ago now...so would be far more now).

I would always recommend pet insurance. You wouldn't drive a car without car insurance. It's there for when shit hits the fan and blindsides you.