Cat Insurance?

[sqidsin]

Do most people have insurance for their cats? We've always had a policy but our lovely boy is 15 now and the latest renewal quote is £1400 for the year!! I've shopped around and it's going to cost st least £1000 I think, plus a hefty excess if we claim.

Just wondering if it would be totally irresponsible not to have any insurance? We have savings so could afford to pay if he was ill / had an accident. He rarely goes outside nowadays and has an annual check at the vet plus vaccinations (which of course we pay for).

Any thoughts?

Yes. My cats have run up 11,000 in the space if 11 months.

£11,000 that should be. And they were health young cats.

Betweem them, my two have cost the insurance company approx £10K over the years and that's going up regularly due to one needing specialist scans every year at nearly £1000 a go.

They're both indoor cats due to health problems.

I'd definitely recommend having insurance, you never know what might happen!

Of course it's not irresponsible if you have savings to pay for any treatment. The main thing is you have the means to pay, whether from savings or insurance. That is a huge premium to pay! Only you know how much your savings are needed for other things and whether it would put you under financial pressure to use them to pay for veterinary treatment. Insurance is not mandatory if it's not the right way for you now.

I have insurance for my cats but I did stop when my older cat was around 16 and his kidneys were getting a bit on the high side of normal. My reason was at his age what would I put him through, if he was involved in an rta, between the GA risk, longer bone healing time, etc was it fair to put him through that? I will add though that I work in a vet practice so any medication that he would have required for hyperthyroidism, etc I would get at cost price so it's much easier for me to say that.

Obviously we don't know if our pets will become ill/how much their treatment will cost but if you have quite a low policy limit with a huge excess as well as huge premiums then it might be worth cancelling and using what you would have paid for his insurance along with any savings for his treatment.

I have seen people with a policy limit of £2500 with £150 excess +20% co-payment. If you claimed the full £2500 minus your £150 excess + £470 co-payment the insurance company will be paying out £1880 towards your bill. If you had paid £1400 for the year then really that's only £480 that they will really be covering. OTOH if you didn't have insurance and put the £1400 in a pot then you would still need to pay out £1100 from your own money to cover the vet fees.

HTH 😊

Thanks.
I know that treatment costs can run into the thousands - I suppose I'm just trying to decide whether to take the risk that they won't be massively higher than we would otherwise pay out in premiums. It's obviously going to up each year as he's getting older, so if he lives for another 5 years that would be at least £7-8k! And it seems unlikely that vet costs would be greater than this... and if they are, we'd just have to suck it up.

Thanks for not making me feel like a bad pet owner for considering it!

And Vodka, thanks for your thoughts - I've just seen your post. Good to have a view from someone who works at a practice. And that's a really good point about the policy limit, it hadn't even occurred to me (duh!!). Our current policy has a limit of £4000 with a £150 plus 10% and the (slightly!) cheaper ones I am considering switching to our £2000 limits.

Thanks, this has really helped to clarify my decision on this!

I nearly cancelled my pet insurance as I thought I could put the money away instead. I'm so glad I didn't get around to it as shortly afterwards he came home with a broken jaw. The bills for his variations operations came to £2.6K. Later that year he got an infection in the jaw which was another £600 and last year he was diagnosed with early CKD which was another £800.

Altogether his bills have been over £4K in the last two years and, taking into account the excesses, the insurance has paid nearly £3K. Obviously we'd have found the money from somewhere but it's been a huge help.

Oh and we're waiting to hear whether they will pay out for his last escapade on Christmas Eve when we thought he'd broken his leg!

I've never bothered with insurance for any of my cats and thus far (30 plus years of ownership and 8 cats to date) this has been the right financial decision with each cat individually, let alone across the eight.