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[quote=Anonymous]My cat, who I love and who is presently sitting next to me, hates the vet. Hates having blood drawn, hates dealing with people who are not his family.

He is getting older but is still in really good healthy. That's a a relief for us.

But when his health starts to fail, as it inevitably will because he's a mortal creature, I will balance the cost of providing him medical care against how much it will actually help him. I don't want him in pain and I want him to live as long as possible. But, for instance, once he turned 15 we decided that if he needs any kind of surgery, we will request palliative care instead and put him to sleep. Putting him through the trauma of the testing, anasthesia, and recovery for surgery, at his age, and given that this would certainly cost us thousands of dollars, doesn't make sense to me. He would hate it. It would be disorienting for him. He can't tell us how he feels. Why would I do that to him? What is the purpose of putting him through that and spending that money? To extend his life for another year or two? When he may encounter additional health problems that require additional care he will also hate the experience of? Where does that end?

When he was a young cat, we spent 2.5k on a surgery that saved his life. It involved him spending a couple nights in an animal hospital and a several week recovery. That was over a decade ago and he's been very healthy since then, so that was unquestionably worth it to me. I hope his life has been good enough that if he were capable of understanding that choice, he would agree -- we have tried to give him the best possible life we can. But there is an age at which that just doesn't make sense. To the degree to which I can understand his preferences, I really just don't think he would want us to spend money we need for other things to prolong his life in that way at this point. He has had a good life, hopefully he gets some more of that good life, but come on. There are limits. I'm not putting a 16 yr old cat in chemotherapy treatment. I'm just not. I'm giving him pain meds and putting him to sleep when it seems like he's had enough.[/quote]

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