Category: Words

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.

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.

Three first drafts: Cimex, Workaday, Five O’Clock Somewhere

The Reproductive Habits of Cimex

Traumatic insemination
is exactly what it sounds like.
There’s no metaphor in this:
A hypodermic organ, a carapace,
and semen in the blood.

The parasite is not a metonym
for shame, nor horror;
There is no sign to read in filth,
in bloodstained sheets
and scarlet welts.

It is, and that is all.

Workaday
The mop-up man at the arcade puts on his gloves
refreshes the supply of concentrated soap
and wipes away the hour’s humiliating stains,
scant seconds of secret lonely joy
and half-burnt cigarettes.
He keeps his head down.
Nobody he wants to see is here.

The banker’s agent changes locks
on the last failure of the day.
The bin outside replete,
he signs his name
and shuts the door.
He keeps his head down.
Nobody he wants to see is here.

Closing time, the bar gone still
a whole long night of smiles
reduced to aching joints and broken glass.
The regulars are not the barkeep’s friends.
They’ll learn it soon enough if they get sober.
He keeps his head down.
Nobody he wants to see is here.

5 O’Clock Somewhere
Open up a bottle, climb inside
and let the world recede,
and make myself an empty husk
until tomorrow’s new decline.