I’m reminded of Leaves a Mark’s frustration with his wife’s ob-gyn as they await the birth of their first son, but on a feline level.
My cat Buddy is a middle-aged tabby. About a month after I adopted him in grad school, Buddy’s inner ear ruptured from an ear mite infestation the agency had told me was solved and done with. A seizure and vet visit later, Buddy the kitten was fine and well, aside from his now trademark head tilt which has won him fame an renown.
Since then Buddy has needed a dose of antibiotics every couple of years when his ear starts acting up again. A week or so later, all is well.
Yet this time our cat vet and pet sitter have a sense of urgency about his regular ear infection. Why, I don’t know. But in order to be good people, I suppose, we need to put Buddy under anaesthesia to see if he has an ear polyp so that we can then (later?) have it removed (under anaesthesia again?).
Except that there’s a complication. Buddy probably has a heart murmur, which makes it dangerous for him to go under anaesthesia. So they want us to give him an ultrasound so they can confirm the heart murmur and gauge how risky anaesthesia might be.
So well-tempered Buddy is supposed to undergo potentially three procedures and a shaved chest to remove his trademark head tilt, which causes only a week or two of bother every couple of years. All for the low, low price of hundreds of dollars. And not because he’s in pain or danger in any way, because he clearly is not. The worst that could happen, from all I can tell, is that he could lose hearing in that ear due to the polyp—hearing he likely lost when his inner ear ruptured years ago.
Now who are these procedures supposed to be for exactly?
When we talk about people doctors, it seems that the procedures are a function of ridiculous numbers of baseless liabilty suits. In the case of your vet maybe she want to take a Winter cruise to the Bahamas or something. Ask her. Let her know you’d be willing to pitch in to by her a nice i luv Buddy shirt(complete with a big picture of Bubby with famous head tilt) instead.
Everyone has gotta make a buck. Don’t be an irresponsible pet owner for the sake of baby jesus.
Yea, I gotta agree. Vets are just getting out of control. I used to have a cool vet who would say about his own cats, “If I don’t see some puke or a hairball on the floor everyfew days at home, I feel like something’s wrong.”
If all that could happen is that Buddy would lose his hearing in one ear, I would say don’t go through all of that and pay all that money.