If you have more than 2 cats…

[User2319]

If you have more than 2 cats what kind of food are they on and do you have insurance? How much does having multiple cats cost? I’m just wondering how people afford it. Is it just simply a case of having a high enough income? I have two cats and they have insurance, one of them is on normal supermarket cat food but the other one has a Gastro food for a sensitive stomach which is expensive.

I would so love another cat but we can’t afford it. Food, insurance, plus yearly vet bills for health checks and boosters and flea and worm treatment… some people have 4 or 5 cats and I can’t even imagine how much that costs. Especially because insurance premiums go up each year 😱

Three cats, all insured (about £80 a month for all three at present). Food is probably around £120 - £150 a month and is a mixture of Untamed, Royal Canin, Sheba and a few other treats like cod, chicken etc. I have three litter trays and buy the huge bags of Cat’s Best litter (£27 per bag) and it does last a good few weeks.

I’ve never wanted or had a human family of my own and my cats are everything to me. I love them so much ❤️

2 cats here. insurance is a big cost. my last cat was insured for many years and it cost me 1000s in total. end of life treatment cost me 200£. its is a gamble. my two current cats are uninsured.

I was thinking the same. I only have 2 cats but they have 3 sachets each day plus a chicken breast between them a couple of times a week. Then the creamy treats and meaty sticks plus the kibble biscuits for snacks and they are not fat cats at all, just very active.

Boycat's few months of diagnosis, treatment & PTS costs made the previous 2 years insurance more than worth it. Tobias's insurance paid out over £3k for various tests, ultrasound scan etc for his stomach which had the side "bonus" of diagnosing his FIV at the same time, and I'd only had him 18 months then. Of course the FIV means no surgery unless life saving due to the risks, but he seems fine & healthy otherwise & I can cope with the horrors of the littler tray caused by his bowel issue.

All fine & good if you have enough money laid aside to pay for any treatments etc, but if you're on a low income insurance is a must IMO.

Mine only get a sachet of Sheba each a day, two handfuls of dry, the odd bit of roast chicken and a few own-brand dreamies. Three sachets of wet food per day sounds like masses to me 🤣

They are only 85g now no longer 100g. I'm sure some cat owners don't notice this. On the box it recommends 3 sachets a day. One of my cats is half Maine Coon so quite a big cat the other a tiny little girl cat. None over weight.

The three sachets a day is only if you don’t feed anything else though - mine get dry, treats and whatever they hunt when they go out - all healthy weights too.

No wonder people are spending so much money if they’re feeding that much wet food 🫣

Girl cat is on whiskas which is £22 a month. But boy cat has special Gastro food which is £15 for a box so that’s £60 for the month, so £82 a month then I get girl cat biscuits sometimes as well because she is so greedy so it usually come to about £90 on average

Ah, fair enough if there’s a special diet involved, that definitely puts the price up! We used to have a cat on a urinary diet, a bag of food was nearly £80 😳

i am happy that worked well for you :)
The payback for cat owners, that do insure their cats, will vary from person to person. It is also fair to say that most of the insurance premiums paid to insurance do go to cover vet bills, somewhere or another. Some of the premiums paid will also provide the insurance companies profit, and cover company operating costs. (gross profit.) In the UK this is about 250 million pounds in profit each year. This profit can be valued at about £50 each year per insured cat. Insuring cats in the UK became common since the 1990s. Before that most of us cat owners did not pay anything to increase the profits of insurance companies. I would suggest that, in general and on average, that cat insurance has become a factor in the increased cost of cat ownership.

Very sensible. It's so easy to get caught out with low insurance cover. Vet bills have skyrocketed lately.

I guess it depends on what you feed and whether you shop around. Wet food is more expensive than dry food and bulk bags bought online tend to be better value for money. I put my cat food into a google search each time I need to order and purchase from whomever is cheapest or where has it on offer at the time.

I have 4 cats, a 10kg bag of Purina Pro Plan Delicate Digestion can last around 6 weeks (exclusively fed) and costs just over £60 with delivery. So £10ish a week. Their Renal Plus formulation is around £50 for 10kg so even cheaper still.

I spent around 10k on my last cat after I reached the insurance limit. She was the sickest cat I ever had but very happy and she lived until she was 21 but my goodness we were always at the vet with something.