Our Poor Expensive Kitty

One of the requirements from the shelter when we adopted Alice was that she must be spayed within thirty days. They gave me a voucher for $30 off the spay at a local vet's office and attached to that was a certificate that the vet would send them confirming that he had performed the surgery. They spoke rather threateningly of coming to steal her away if they didn't receive that confirmation within the allotted time.

So, shortly after we brought Alice home I took her for a check up at the local animal hospital. At that check up they found that she had ear mites an ear infection from the mites and gingivitis. The vet prescribed some medicine to get rid of the mites and some antibiotic drops for her ears. He said he wanted to do a dental cleaning soon to help combat the gingivitis and see if she needed any teeth pulled. I decided to hold off on that and see if her gums got better being at home with us.

So that was a pretty expensive trip to the vet, and I hadn't even gotten her spayed yet. I decided to postpone the spay until she was no longer being treated for her ear infection.

While we were waiting for her ears to get better a thought occurred to me. What if she had already been spayed in her "past life"? It would be silly to shave down and cut open this poor animal for no reason. So I called and asked them. "What happens if she's already spayed?"

They said the only way the Dr. could be sure would be to open her up and see if there's nothing in there to take out. But they would gladly wait if I wanted to see if she would go into heat or not. I remembered the threats of the shelter saying they would come take her away if she wasn't altered on time and decided not to chance it.

So I took her in. With the voucher the shelter gave me the surgery would not be very expensive. I also had high hopes that her gums were doing better. They didn't look nearly as red or swollen as they had when I first got her.

A couple hours after I dropped her off one of the vet-techs called me: "You were wondering about whether or not she was spayed already. Well, we have her sedated and shaved and there is a scar there. We can't be positive that it's not from some other surgery, though."

I sighed. It would be better to be positive and have the certificate than to back out and violate the contract. I told them to go ahead and check.

A little while later I got another call. It turns out Alice was already spayed. They'd shaved her down and cut her open just so I could have a piece of paper.

Sigh... okay.

But there was more. As the vet-tech was extubating her she noticed that Alice had a pretty nasty cavity on one tooth. She touched it and it obviously caused Alice pain. Did I want them to go ahead with the dental cleaning and pull that tooth? She quoted me a total price that was about four times as expensive as the spay alone.

Sigh... okay.

A while later I got another call. The same vet-tech explained that they had done the dental cleaning and the vet examined all Alice's teeth. There were six teeth that he recommended be pulled, one of which was already cracked in half and all of them had cavities all the way to the root. She explained that I could turn down the procedure but that eventually the pain could cause her to become aggressive or, if they got infected, to die. I asked if any of these teeth weren't really necessary to be pulled. She checked with the vet and answered that he recommended they ALL be taken out.

Sigh... okay. (Can you tell I'm a pushover, yet?)

So, in the end, she didn't really need to be spayed, but she had six teeth pulled. I won't quote prices here, I'm not sure if any of you have heart problems and I don't want to put you at risk of a heart attack. But, in the end I spent about SIXTEEN TIMES what I was planning to spend on her spay alone. For what I spent that day I could have driven to Los Angeles and bought a fancy purebred cat from a breeder and still had money left over to get it's shots and spayed or neutered it.

She is a very sweet kitty and I think she deserves to be taken care of. I just wish it wasn't so darn expensive.