Author: Aaron Weber

Budgeting for Vet Emergecies

Cross-posted from blog.saltmoney.org.

I never wanted to be the person who spent a ton of money on a pet. After all, as much as the Internet loves cats, providing world-class health care for kittens seems frivolous when actual human children can’t get clean water.

I never understood the sort of person who would spend a month’s pay or more to revive a sick and elderly animal. I figured if I had a pet, I’d take a hard look at the numbers, have my maximum, and not go over it.

Then my cat got sick, and I went way over budget.

DECLINING HEALTH

In my case, it began slowly. All cats throw up sometimes, but D’Artagnan, a.k.a. “Big D,” started doing it a lot. My wife and I noticed he looked a little thinner, but that’s not a bad thing for a 20-pound cat. And then he looked a lot thinner. He lost about 8 pounds—nearly a third of his body weight, or the equivalent of an entire average-sized cat.

His fur went dull, and he looked like a taxidermist had prepared him for mounting but forgotten the stuffing. You ever see those TV shows where a person loses 200 pounds and needs plastic surgery to remove the excess skin? He looked like that, only less life-affirming. We started calling him Skeletor.

The vet diagnosed hyperthyroidism and prescribed these chewable liver-flavored medicine treats twice a day. The diagnosis cost us a couple hundred bucks, and the medicine was about a dollar a day. He got better almost immediately, and we figured that was totally worth it.

Then he started fading again, and the vet suggested we add liver-flavored corticosteroid treats. Diagnosis and treatment cost about the same again, and again he revived almost immediately, even putting a little weight back on.

EMERGENCY

After about a year, we’d spent maybe $750 over and above the usual costs of cat ownership—food, litter, annual vaccines, and so forth. We didn’t mind. He was an exceptional cat, after all, and we could afford it. We set up a “Pets” budget on Mint.com, and it was all fine and manageable.

Then, last Friday evening, he seemed ill. Saturday, when the vet was closed, we noticed he wasn’t eating. Sunday, I went to check on him—he had urinated all over himself and our bed, and was struggling to breathe.

We spent the better part of Sunday at Boston’s 24/7 animal ER. They gave him oxygen for his labored breathing, electrolytes for his too-low potassium levels, IV fluids to flush out his inflamed kidneys, and insulin to reduce his elevated blood sugar. The vet said the kidneys might be inflamed because of an infection and chronic kidney disease. Or because of cancer. They’d need a biopsy to find out.

We decided against the biopsy and took him home.

WHERE THE MONEY WENT

I didn’t want the biopsy for several reasons, some of them simple and most of them not: I didn’t want to spend the money. I didn’t want to have someone cut yet another hole in my poor cat. We could find out by waiting: If it’s cancer, the antibiotics won’t work. Most of all, and maybe most upsetting, there’s not much point in knowing. If he’s got cancer, we probably won’t be able to afford to treat it.

D’Artagnan is at home now, and recovering well. We’ve got a table full of medication, including a bag of electrolyte solution we inject him with every evening. We’ve become the people I used to make fun of: We’ve turned our dining room into a makeshift veterinary clinic; we spent a month’s pay on one trip to the vet.

Just in case I hadn’t noticed that it was expensive, I got an alert from Mint.com warning me that I had exceeded my “Pets” budget by more than $2,000.

We don’t know how much more life we’ve bought Big D, but I’ve learned this much from the experience: Even if you think you’re pragmatic and tough about money and pets, you should still probably set aside twice what you think you’ll need for a veterinary emergency.

Budgeting for Vet Emergencies

I never wanted to be the person who spent a ton of money on a pet. After all, as much as the Internet loves cats, providing world-class health care for kittens seems frivolous when actual human children can’t get clean water.

I never understood the sort of person who would spend a month’s pay or more to revive a sick and elderly animal. I figured if I had a pet, I’d take a hard look at the numbers, have my maximum, and not go over it.

Then my cat got sick, and I went way over budget.

***

DECLINING HEALTH

In my case, it began slowly. All cats throw up sometimes, but D’Artagnan, a.k.a. “Big D,” started doing it a lot. My wife and I noticed he looked a little thinner, but that’s not a bad thing for a 20-pound cat. And then he looked a lot thinner. He lost about 8 pounds—nearly a third of his body weight, or the equivalent of an entire average-sized cat.

His fur went dull, and he looked like a taxidermist had prepared him for mounting but forgotten the stuffing. You ever see those TV shows where a person loses 200 pounds and needs plastic surgery to remove the excess skin? He looked like that, only less life-affirming. We started calling him Skeletor.

The vet diagnosed hyperthyroidism and prescribed these chewable liver-flavored medicine treats twice a day. The diagnosis cost us a couple hundred bucks, and the medicine was about a dollar a day. He got better almost immediately, and we figured that was totally worth it.

Then he started fading again, and the vet suggested we add liver-flavored corticosteroid treats. Diagnosis and treatment cost about the same again, and again he revived almost immediately, even putting a little weight back on.

EMERGENCY

After about a year, we’d spent maybe $750 over and above the usual costs of cat ownership—food, litter, annual vaccines, and so forth. We didn’t mind. He was an exceptional cat, after all, and we could afford it. We set up a “Pets” budget on Mint.com, and it was all fine and manageable.

Then, last Friday evening, he seemed ill. Saturday, when the vet was closed, we noticed he wasn’t eating. Sunday, I went to check on him—he had urinated all over himself and our bed, and was struggling to breathe.

We spent the better part of Sunday at Boston’s 24/7 animal ER. They gave him oxygen for his labored breathing, electrolytes for his too-low potassium levels, IV fluids to flush out his inflamed kidneys, and insulin to reduce his elevated blood sugar. The vet said the kidneys might be inflamed because of an infection and chronic kidney disease. Or because of cancer. They’d need a biopsy to find out.

We decided against the biopsy and took him home.

WHERE THE MONEY WENT

I didn’t want the biopsy for several reasons, some of them simple and most of them not: I didn’t want to spend the money. I didn’t want to have someone cut yet another hole in my poor cat. We could find out by waiting: If it’s cancer, the antibiotics won’t work. Most of all, and maybe most upsetting, there’s not much point in knowing. If he’s got cancer, we probably won’t be able to afford to treat it.

D’Artagnan is at home now, and recovering well. We’ve got a table full of medication, including a bag of electrolyte solution we inject him with every evening. We’ve become the people I used to make fun of: We’ve turned our dining room into a makeshift veterinary clinic; we spent a month’s pay on one trip to the vet.

Just in case I hadn’t noticed that it was expensive, I got an alert from Mint.com warning me that I had exceeded my “Pets” budget by more than $2,000.

We don’t know how much more life we’ve bought Big D, but I’ve learned this much from the experience: Even if you think you’re pragmatic and tough about money and pets, you should still probably set aside twice what you think you’ll need for a veterinary emergency.

Maybach Music

Now that Maybach the car brand is going the way of the Pontiac, what will become of Rick Ross’ record label, Maybach Music?

Oh, but that’s not the point.

Remember “Juicy,” with the line “Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, when I was dead broke man I couldn’t picture this?” Think about those aspirations and celebrations and compare them to a record label whose entire brand promise is that it’s as opulent as a car that costs more than a house (Seriously: The cheapest model had a base price of $344,000).

I wonder whether that brand promise also includes obese styling and unprofitability. Probably.

Draft: Cutting In

Cutting in
It’s only when I’m cutting in that my mistakes become apparent,
Though they began before I started painting.
Color bubbles under shoddy tape-lines, inconsistent brush-strokes testify to haste.
My secret shame is in the dust painted to the wall above the windows,
But it’s too late now to go back and clean.
And later still, the brushes clean and the table back in place
I’ll spot my painted footprint on the floor, the evidence of careless moments past.

That was not a positive review

Mentioned on Twitter and expanded here: Dan Neil’s recent review of the Porsche Panamera GTS is decidedly mixed. The people posting comments at the WSJ (yes, I know, newspaper comment sections – where civility and intelligence go to die) don’t seem to get that, however. They’ll debate the relative merits of the Maserati Quattroporte, or argue about whether sedan and SUV brand extensions are appropriate strategy for a company known most for roadsters.

But they don’t address the fact that Neil is trolling Porsche fans and supercar drivers in general. That’s why he begins by casting the Panamera as the car in a modern-day remake of The Great Gatsby. The fact that Gatsby owns a Rolls Royce, he says, means something – that’s why Neil is so annoyed to see it swapped for a Duesenberg in the most recent movie. Gatsby had a Rolls Royce because buying one was a quick, vulgar, ostentatious status symbol in the Roaring 20s.

Look, we all might think it would be grand to live like Gatsby, but that’s not the point of the novel, and that fabulous car and those fabulous shirts don’t actually make Gatsby good or great.

So, what does Fitzgerald’s novel have to do with a $150,000 sport sedan like the Panamera GTS? Dan Neil is a clever writer but not a subtle one, so he actually says it twice: Like Gatsby’s Rolls Royce, the Panamera GTS tells the world that you’re desperate for people to envy you, and that you’ve got more money than brains. It is, he says, the perfect car for the rich to drive while committing vehicular manslaughter.

That’s not a positive review. Sure, he loves the acceleration and the beautifully stitched leather interior, and he obviously enjoyed his afternoon in the driver’s seat, but he’s not willing to give an ounce of respect to anyone rich and vulgar and dumb enough to actually buy the damn thing.

Disagreeing with Andrew Sullivan

I feel almost silly trying to argue with Andrew Sullivan, because his whole job is to create these arguments. But still, I think he and his commenters are missing a key point on the whole Bloomberg proposal to limit the maximum soda size in the city. I agree that it’s silly to have that regulation and also the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. But life is silly sometimes. And the Nathan’s contest comes but once a year, while sodas are every day.

The broader point Sully is making is that government regulation is generally a bad thing, and that people should be free to have as much bad-for-them soda as they want. But here’s the thing: Government is how people as a society make decisions.

Let’s use the (admittedly-flawed) household analogy. My wife likes a piece of chocolate now and then, but I really love chocolate. If there’s chocolate out on the counter, I’ll take a piece every time I walk past, and the next thing you know, I’ve eaten it all. So, we hide it.

I know exactly where the candy is – it’s in the top left drawer in the dining room cabinet, with the spare keys and the emergency flashlights and candles. But because it’s out of my immediate reach, I don’t eat it all. It’s not impossible for me to get it, but I make the decision in advance not to eat it, and then I don’t have to think about it again. I’m not forbidden from eating chocolate. It’s just ever so slightly more inconvenient.

Or consider Sullivan’s own medical care. Rather than make the decision every week about when to take an injected dosage of medication, he got a time-release implant. Making the decision in advance, once, in a more-permanent way, improved his health by taking a regular decision out of his hands.

If a large number of New Yorkers and advisers say “Mayor Bloomberg, we’re concerned about our health, please adjust regulations to make us healthier overall” then he’s got a very good reason to restrict extra-large sugared beverages.

This is, in fact, why Mitt Romney’s “corporations are people” statement is almost true. Corporations are made of people. They’re a way that people pool money and risk and decision-making.

And yes, I’m saying this as a liberal technocrat for Obama. People, whether they’re acting as decisionmakers for themselves or for their corporations, don’t always do the right thing. Getting those regulations right matters, whether they’re outright bans or little nudges.

Whether restricting maximum soda portion size makes a difference remains to be seen. But it’s not an unreasonable restriction on liberty, especially since, as everyone points out, it’s just a nudge and not an outright ban.