Cat insurance question

[Cobblesofstyle]

Dcat has been insured for years with Pet Plan. We've never claimed, and she has had no conditions/ illnesses/ concerns so far (fingers crossed she stays lucky). Her policy was a lifetime one but it has started going up exponentially year on year. This might be a daft question but when this current policy ends, can I basically re-set and start a "new" lifetime policy (either with Pet Plan or a new provider) to bring the cost down?

It feels like I'm paying over the odds for existing conditions to be covered, and there aren't any! Any recommendations for good cat policy providers would also be welcome 💐

It depends how old the cat is. You can't take out a policy once they are over a certain age.

I dropped down from the Lifetime cover to the more limited one once our cat hit 16 - I figured at this age I’m not going to put her through any expensive life prolonging treatments (which is presumably why the premiums climb). She’s now an indoor cat (her choice) so no risk of traffic accidents. PetPlan still paid out for a dental with no issues too.

She's 10

Yes good shout, I can see me doing this when she's a bit older

How much is your premium?

Most insurers won't let you start a new policy after the age of 8, and those that do will exclude everything she's ever seen the vet for, and charge you 20% of all bills on top of your excess if you need to claim.

It will now just keep going up, you could change the level of cover as PP suggested to make it less painful. We got up to around £60 a month, at age 16, before our old boy died, we were just about breaking even on cost of meds vs insurance. This was PetPlan covered for life up to £4k a year.

You just never know what conditions they may develop as they age - CKD, heart issues, diabetes, arthritis, cancer, epilepsy...

DSis had a cat with who developed epilepsy and his meds each month were costing about 3-4 x what the insurance premiums would have cost. Boycat developed CKD and the monitoring alone over 6 months would have cost 2 year's premiums. Then again, (touching wood) Girlcat is about 12 now and has had a total of one visit to the vet in the 10 years she's been here apart from her annual MoT and jab - and that was just me being a little paranoid.

I think that's the thing - it's called insurance for a reason, it's to ensure you don't get a massive cost out of the blue that isn't covered, it's a "just in case" payment. Similar to life or health insurance for people who have loss of work cover.

And the premiums go up more because the cats are more likely to develop conditions that cost money to treat as they get older, rather than making allowances for existing conditions, and many illnesses and injuries take more to recover from as the animal gets older - like in people, an older person is likely to take much longer than say a teenager (all things being equal) to recover from a broken bone or longer term illness.