When Jeff and I decided to get cats last year, we didn’t want to treat them as members of the family when it came to medical spending, especially at end-of-life.
One family member called a vet to euthanize their elderly dog, but the vet instead prescribed a lot of medication and further visits that prolonged the dog’s life another few months. Another family member paid a lot of money to save the life of of the family cat, not because he wanted to, but because he couldn’t reach his wife and thought she might feel strongly about it. Jeff and I spelled out to each other that we didn’t expect this.
Some reasons:
- People in the past didn’t do this. (But then, people in the past did lots of awful things.)
- We don’t give anywhere near this kind of consideration to other animals, especially farmed animals.
- Requiring high levels of spending for pets you adopt seems unreasonable, given that so many cats and dogs get euthanized because they’re not adopted.
People didn’t always spend this way
Intense diagnostic and medical services for pets basically didn’t exist a few decades ago. Starting in the 1980s, veterinarians developed specialties in oncology, radiology, dermatology, etc. More types of treatments are available than before. Spending on pets’ veterinary care has roughly doubled since I was a child (this chart shows through 2012, and it’s continued to rise).
Most people from a century ago, or from countries where “pets” aren’t really a thing, would consider this absurd.
We don’t treat other animals like this
It seems pretty weird that people assume strong obligations to pets in particular, and not to other animals. The obligation is also specific to the particular animal you take home — nobody considers you to have an obligation to an animal you almost adopted but didn’t.
By contrast, Americans raise, slaughter, and eat 1.7 billion animals each year. Pigs are generally considered smarter than cats or dogs, but we raise them in disgusting and cruel conditions. Anti-cruelty laws typically don’t apply to farmed animals.
Some layers of ethics
Layer 1: It’s good for animals if people make a firm commitment to keep the pets they adopt and get them good medical care.
Layer 2: More animals might get adopted if the barrier weren’t as high. 50-70% of dogs and cats entering shelters in the US end up euthanized. Some of these are especially hard-to-place animals because of behavior, medical problems, or age. But another common reason is overcrowding in shelters.
My guess is that more people might be willing to take the risk on adopting a pet if it were more acceptable to return them if there’s a significant behavior problem, or not to spend a lot of money on veterinary care. This might result in more overall adoption and less euthanization of animals who never get adopted.
Layer 3: Saving more cats and dogs is bad for animals overall, because more animals will become pet food.
Layer 4, getting galaxy brained: In a crisis that affects food production, having production capacity from the pet food industry could be good for human survival.
Counterpoint: reasons to consume more veterinary care
- I have no problem with other people treating their pets as family members if they want to.
- Getting animals spayed / neutered seems clearly worth it in most circumstances, both in terms of better behavior from your own pets and in terms of not producing unwanted litters.
- When we adopted from a rescue agency, others had already put work and money into caring for these specific animals. The people who rescued and fostered our cats were doing so with the expectation that these cats would have happy and healthy lives. I agreed to take these cats on the conditions they set.
- When our kid’s fish was dying, I was more bothered by it than the kids were. I found it pretty sad to watch it declining and imagining what that might feel like. I can imagine that especially with a more beloved and more treatable pet, we’ll all be bothered by seeing them suffer enough to find it worth spending money on medical treatment.
Aside on population change
I wondered if increasing pet ownership could be causing decreasing fertility, but Lyman Stone says it ain’t so; families with children are more likely to have pets. In our case, we were willing to get pets for our kids, but weren’t interested in the cats taking on a child-like role in our lives.
What we decided in the end
We would follow most of the standard recommendations for pets, including keeping the cats inside. This greatly improves their expected health, because they won’t be exposed to cars, other animals, parasites, and diseases. It also decreases the number of other small animals they kill or maim.
We plan to provide basic veterinary care but not expensive diagnostics or treatments, especially at end of life.
The most likely reason we’ll end up spending more on care than we planned: Our kids didn’t opt into this. When the cats get old and sick, we may decide it’s worth the money to give the kids more time with their pets.
My dog passed away a couple days ago. He had a heart condition that, in humans, is treated surgically, but open heart surgery on a Chihuahua is sufficiently different from open heart surgery on a human that it’s rarely done and the condition is usually treated with medication instead. I still expected him to live for several more years, but that evening he started to have labored breathing and instead of taking him to an expensive emergency vet (that couldn’t save the last sick animal I brought them), I decided to wait until the morning when my normal vet’s office opened, but the poor baby ended up passing away while I slept.
I miss him a lot.