How much does it cost for month for a cat?

[Qqbank01]

Just moved to a new house and planning to get a family cat.
Can anyone share their monthly budget on a cat? I can only think of food/treats, vets, litter and toys, did I miss anything?

You forgot two one-off costs; neutering, and a carrying cage for transport.

Ongoing annual costs ; vet insurance, annual vaccinations/flea/worm treatments, and boarding costs when you go away.

So my cat is a non pedigree Domestic Long Hair black & white cat.
She was £70 from Cats Protection 4 years ago. Refuses to step foot outside. So an indoor cat since being rescued. Aged approximately 8. She is very spoilt.

I pay £13 a month pet insurance.
£100s every approx 3-4 months at the vet for check ups, anti sickness injections for her chronic pancreatitis & steroid tablets for her asthma (luckily I get the money back after up to 4 weeks on her insurance). She only developed those illnesses in the past year.

£20 every 2.5 - 3 months at the vet for 2 person claw clips, 2 people essential as she's wriggly.

£10.99 x 3 or x 4 a month of anti bacterial clumping cat litter.
£1.50 every 3 months for 200 litter bags.
£28 every 4 months for a Willow scratching post
£15 for 40 sachets of Whiskas Delight Fish in Jelly x 3 or 4 boxes a month.
£3.50 a week for 2 packs of Tesco roast beef to wrap her steroid tablets in.

I can't remember how much the flea spot on treatment & worming spot on treatment from the vet cost. You have to get the most up to date one and use one pipette 4 weekly.

Approx £50 for yearly vaccinations at the vet.

£600 for tooth extractions - not claimable on pet insurance as due to decay.

£6 for 12 of her favourite foam bouncy balls from Amazon which soon lose their bounce.

££ for catnip toys (catnip is the only thing that relaxes her).

She's definitely worth it though!

Oh yes & cat carry box plus cushion, cat bed plus fleece, cat water bowl, 2 cat food bowls, cat food mat, cat food fork.
Extra vacuum cleaner bags for all the long cat hair & a Miele Pet Hair Vacuum cleaner! A pet tangle teezer brush.

Cat litter tray & pet friendly disinfectant spray.
Most necessary for the pancreatitis episodes... lots of carpet cleaner lotion.

Ours costs around £30 a month which includes insurance and annual jabs. I haven't included the cost of scratching posts and toys. She's a moggie and goes out as and when she pleases.

On top of everything above my cat insurance was under £10 by the end it was £49 a month, higher excess and had to pay the first 15% of any bill. We worked out DCat was costing us around £180-£200 a month before he died.

I would recommend vaccination for life if you aren't planning to move. We paid £99 up front and got his annual vaccination and health check for free for 12 years

My two are greedy piglets, Aldi premium wet food and James Wellbeloved dry so about £30pm each on food, £8 each insurance, whatever litter is on offer so around £8pm. Water fountain filters (yes I know 😅) £5pm ish.

Cat flap £70
Cat tree £60
Scratcher £20
Toys £8 billion every time I enter B&M
Ruined carpet £1000
Ruined chair £250
Never getting a lie in again and getting pawed awake at 4am £priceless.

They are my beautiful babies and I am a total cat convert in less than 6 months 😂dd (13) has commented that I've never talked about her the way I talk to the cats so I've started stroking her hair before I go to work.

We pay £15 per month for the healthy pet club at the vet, which covers all flea and worm treatment, yearly vaccination boosters (but not the initial vax), 6-monthly nurse checkups, 10% off any treatment and 15% off medication.
I really like that it spreads the cost.

We pay £96 annually for insurance, for young cat, so only £8 per month

Food cost is a little under £6 per week, so say £25 per month.

Litter costs more in winter, barely used in summer. Maybe £3.50 per month

So a little over £50 per month normally.

Oh yes. I forgot the spay and cat carry case.

And the three grand for the new sofas!
Scratched them to shreds before we'd even finished paying for them.

Cat scratching post - untouched. 🙄

Bought clear plastic self adhesive panels for the new sofas.

Budget for lots of carpet shampoo, both spot cleaner with a brush and a vax plus carpet shampoo for bigger messes. Dcat is very sicky

I have an indoor ragdoll (ragdolls generally have to be indoor because they are incredibly stupid and would never make it outdoors) and 2 moggies. The indoor cat eats only one type of dried food. It’s about £14 for a big bag that lasts a month. I buy semi expensive litter (Asda no clump) thats £4.50 a bag because it actually needs changed less frequently so works out cheaper that the cheap stuff. I only get her vaccinations because she goes into a Cattery occasionally and because she mixes with our other cats . I flea her with very expensive advantage flea treatment because our local fleas are tolerant to frontline

the moggies cost a fortune. They are/were constantly scrapping with other local moggies so we (when they were younger) were at the vets all the time with abscesses, bad paws, broken claws. They are old now so ‘retired’, they eat only one or two types of pouch food and have dry biscuits. The oldest one is senile and hyperthyroid so he not only screams like a newborn baby to be fed, but he forgets that he has eaten and gets lost around the house 🤦‍♀️ our other one has clearly got at least one other home and is quite overweight, very rarely eats at home. Both are immune to fleas but do get wormed.

we have been exceptionally lucky that in 16 years of cat ownership we have never had anything more than a few hundred pound vet bill, we don’t insure our cats. The old one is starting to cost us a bit more recently but I don’t think he has long left.

if you want advice re food, never ever let them taste felix or whiskas pouches because they are kitty crack and once they do, you are in for life. Stick to one decent quality brand of dry food.

Monthly for the cats - about £15. Food, flea and worm treatments. No regular vet bills and now they are older I don't get them vaccinated.

I don't get them insured either. If they were that ill I'd get them put down and set them free from ongoing pain and misery. Then it's just random visits to vet for fighting injuries! Not enough to warrant insurance costs.

Thank you everyone, that’s very helpful for me to consider before making commitment to a cat.

Depends how suicidal the cat is!

Recommend good insurance - lifetime unlimited payment for each condition with low/ no excess. If the cat turns out to not be suicidal after 4/5 years then you can lower the premium by increasing the excess quite considerably.

I think insurance is essential.
The 2 chronic health issues my cat has are not bad enough to have her pts.

Literally she just needs anti sickness injections every few weeks if she gets bouts of sickness (she'll vomit up to 6 times in a row) due to her chronic pancreatitis.
It's generally kept under control by a low fat diet.
But the occasional bouts are triggered by stress as she's an anxious rescue cat.

Also she has a quarter of a steroid tablet alternate nights to keep her asthma away otherwise she starts bouts of coughing.
Again, mainly triggered by cold, and possibly anxiety.

The insurance pays for her vet appointments and treatments.
She's otherwise a very happy playful and healthy cat and it would be very wrong to pts for two minor treatable health conditions.

To combat the anxiety I let her hide when visitors arrive, men especially scare her.
Catnip relaxes her a lot and so does brushing her fur, but I've tried feliway and it doesn't work on her.

Have you tried Pet Remedy instead of Feliway?
Rescue Remedy - the alcohol free one, can be dropped in water or rubbed on ears for stress.

I'd say this is fair.
My boy is an 18 month old house cat and costs £11 a month on a pet plan for his flea and worm, eats a mix of mainly quality food wet and dry food and the odd bit of whiskers because he was fed it by the breeder and got a taste.
Spoilt with dreamies/meat sticks and those cat yoghurts. Used catsan litter, so could be cheaper there.

Neutering was £60 plus about £40 for a blood panel so we had the 'normal' for him on file to make diagnostics faster/easier if he's ever poorly in future.

The vet recommend I feed biscuits as well as wet keep his teeth clean and is always impressed by how clean his are, so seems a good preventative measure.

He usually gets a couple of toys a month (spoilt!).

I'd guess around £60-70 a month - usually pick his bits up with our shop so estimating.

Of course, an outdoor cat likely poses more of a risk of vet bills so would be worth having a little kitty if you're thinking of letting him out.
Damage wise, my little guy didn't damage anything. Constantly redirected if he was showing interest in something he shouldn't, as if training a puppy, and he was bored of it in less than a week.

Good luck!

If your cat is like mine you won't need a bed 😂

About £5 per week for food. Our cat is 8 and has never needed the vet apart from being spayed as a kitten and jabs.
When we go away we leave the car at home and a friend feeds her twice a day. She poops outside so no litter tray.
Only other expense was getting a cat flap fitted and a chip put in her neck so it opens just for her. Was done during the spaying op.

My cats are on gocat and whiskers. That's totally fine for them

It's the vet fees that are the expensive bit. I just paid £300 for a teeth clean, it would have cost £200 more without the £16 a month healthy pet plan giving a discount on dentals. We were originally quoted £700 but in the end, he didn't need any teeth out. He had teeth out 2 and 4 years ago.

My 12 year old had giardia earlier this year which cost about £800 to treat, thankfully most of it was covered by insurance.

Not sure if it has been mentioned, but many cats live for 18 or 20 years, so that needs factoring in to their overall cost.

Our cat is old so we stopped paying for pet insurance as the excess was ridiculous. She has an overactive thyroid. Meds are £30 a month plus £30 twice a year for the veterinary prescriptions. £40 a month on food. So she costs us about £900 a year. She's worth every penny x

I have three indoor cats. Their food, litter and insurance totals around a hundred a month.