Saturday, February 9, 2008

Rant

My poor cat is a wreck. I took him to the vet yesterday since he needed to get a rabies shot. He had a full wellness exam, too, and it's a good thing he did because it turns out he has a bad ear infection! Poor guy. Every year the vet cleans a bunch of gunk out of his ears, but he has never had an infection before. I had noticed just the other day that he was shaking his head when I was scratching his ears, and that he was starting to get a bald patch from scratching so much. I sort of had a feeling there might be something wrong. So now I have to give him ear drops twice a day for the next ten days, and hopefully that will clear the infection up, although the vets says I'll probably have to try to clean out his ears weekly from now on. Have you ever tried putting drops in a cat's ears? You should try it sometime, it's quite the workout (especially if, like me, your cat weighs 15 pounds). I'm in the habit of cleaning my dog's ears out weekly (he has long floppy ears and air doesn't circulate into them well so they're prone to infection if you don't clean them regularly) so I guess adding the cat to the weekly routine won't be too much of a hassle.
I'm really frustrated with how incredibly expensive vet care is here, though. I've been comparing prices and everyone is really expensive. I think I'll keep going back to the person I went to yesterday for now, since I liked her, but it's seriously three times the amount to get vet care here than it was in my last home. Here's how insane it is: the vet recommended that my cat get his teeth cleaned. He's nine years old and lived in dumpsters for a large portion of his life, so I'm not surprised his teeth are kind of a mess. She showed them to me, and they do look pretty gross at the back of his mouth. The thing is, it costs $600 to do a dental treatment! SIX HUNDRED FREAKIN' DOLLARS. That's more than half of my monthly income right now. It's so expensive because you have to pay for the dental work itself, plus the anesthesia, plus on older cats (anything over six is "older") they won't do the surgery without an IV, catheter, and a blood test to make sure his body can handle the anesthesia...it's just ridiculous. Who can actually afford to pay for things like that?! That's more than I pay for dental treatment for myself. And I've looked into pet insurance and it doesn't really help much. You end up paying at least $300 a year for the insurance, and there are a ton of things it doesn't cover. When I eventually have a real income (if that ever happens in my lifetime) I plan to make a savings account for emergency pet care, but I just don't have the money to do that right now. I don't even have an emergency savings account for myself. It just annoys me, because then I end up feeling guilty, like I'm being a bad pet mom for letting my cat walk around with rotting teeth. Logically, though, I know cats and dogs were living for thousands of years without dental treatments and heartworm pills and all of the other things we're now encouraged (practically required, if you don't want vets giving you guilt trips) to do. My pets are like family to me, and I know I would go to greater lengths than many people would to keep them healthy and with me as long as possible. But seriously, vet costs are getting extremely out of control. Even people like me have to draw the line somewhere, and I'll be drawing that line at a six hundred dollar dental treatment.
I asked the vet, "What are the consequences if I don't do the dental?" and she said, "It's not an emergency situation," and I said "Okay then." And I went to Petsmart and spent $12 on a prescription tartar control food to mix into his cheaper grocery store food, and $4 on some stuff to put in their water that is supposed to fight tartar and gum disease. And that's going to have to be good enough.

Speaking of pets, I passed one of my neighbors when I was walking my dog this morning and she smiled at him and said, "Hi, Luke!" She has been saying hi to him for months and a few times she greeted him with a name and I thought to myself, "What is she calling him?" Now this morning I distinctly heard that she's calling him Luke. My dog's name is not Luke. It's not even remotely close to Luke. It's a two-syllable name that starts with a C. So I can't figure out why on earth she would be calling him Luke. The problem is that she has been calling him this for months, apparently, and I feel like it would be awkward for me to suddenly say, "Oh, by the way, it's not Luke." So I guess if she wants to call him Luke, that's cool with me. She seems a bit eccentric anyway.
Oh, and speaking of weird neighbors, I was getting into my car the other day when one of my neighbors pulled up and got out of his truck. Since he was right beside me I was a friendly neighbor and said hello, and he said hi and then added, "Hey, do you remember my friend, the blonde guy that was working on the truck with me the other day?" In my head I was thinking, "No, not really, and the time you and your friend said hello when you were working on a truck was actually two months ago and not exactly the other day," but out loud I said, "Kind of..." and he said, "Oh, well, he wanted me to tell you hi." So I said, "Well, tell him I said hi, too." But what I wanted to say was, "Well, that's pointless." Seriously, what's going to happen? He's going to tell me his friend said hi and I'm going to say, "Oh yes, I do remember your friend the blonde who said exactly two words to me. I'd love to get to know him! Let's hang out!"? In what universe does that actually happen? I realize I'm being kind of bitchy, but based on looks alone I'm not interested, and if he was interested in me based on looks alone, then he should have grown some balls and talked to me that day and not told his friend to say hi to me (two months later). We're not 12.

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