I hate people

[michelel72]

If you have a pet that needs twice-daily medication (that you skip every weekend because you and the spouse go to the Cape, and it's not like you see any need to change that) so that it won't starve to death from its thyroid disorder, if you "can't possibly afford" $20/day to board the pet somewhere that will medicate it while you're away for three weeks, you can't afford to go on a three-week vacation. Because keeping a dependent animal alive comes before vacations.

And you certainly shouldn't expect me to nod and agree with you that, well, what can you do but leave the pet untreated and vaguely hope it survives three weeks of starvation.

FFS.

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Comments

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

I wish I thought you were kidding... (and we have put off visiting people on weekends due to needing to medicate a cat.)

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

If only, yeah.

[octoberdreaming.livejournal.com]

Oh gods. Can you report this to the SPCA or anything? :( Because the pet will probably not survive that.

I hate people, too. :(

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

The thing is, this woman sounded perfectly ready to euthanize the cat when she got the diagnosis, until she didn't get sympathy for that suggestion; I fully expect she'd go through with it if approached by the SPCA. And that's if the SPCA would even do anything; the state is drowning in abandoned pets, and pets needing medication are often deemed unadoptable and euthanized by the "rescue" agencies.

I've offered her a simple solution to test, but even if that doesn't work I'll be making sure she comes up with a better plan before this vacation. I just don't understand how anyone can think that way ....

[octoberdreaming.livejournal.com]

I don't understand it either. :( Bless you for interceding for the poor kitty. Why people adopt pets without accepting the responsibility for their care, I will never know.

[introverte.livejournal.com]

WHAT

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

Seriously. I'll be "helping" her find an actual solution, but ... how can you be an actual human being and think like that??

[violetcheetah.livejournal.com]

As long as the owners don't plan to eat during their vacation, it seems fair.

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

Shockingly, I doubt that's the plan, alas.

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

Um, context?

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

A woman at my workplace is on chatting terms with my workgroup and has asked my advice about cats before, since her friend in my group has mentioned my cat rescue activities. As I recall, she wanted to take the cat back to the shelter for scratching the carpet, for example; let the cat lose over half her body weight while eating ravenously before going to the vet to find out what was wrong; and floated the idea that medicating a cat daily and paying for medication was just too much to expect of a person, a suggestion I obviously had no sympathy for.

She asked after my cats while I was waiting to meet someone and then used that to mention how her cat is still so hungry (which is likely due to the weekly undermedication, as I pointed out). She has a neighbor feed the cat while she's away every weekend, and he refuses to attempt to medicate her cats due to a difficult prior-pet experience. So, she adds airily, she doesn't know what she'll do when they're away for three weeks come February, since there's no one to give the medicine.

Um, I pointed out, no one? Aren't you boarding her, then?

Oh, well that's $20 a day, she says, and clearly they can't afford that. She'll just moan to a few folks what a shame it is and see if the cat makes it through.

I suggested (yet again) having the neighbor dose the food; if the cat's ravenous due to undernutrition due to the thyroid problem, she'll eventually eat the food despite any distaste, which gets both calories and medication into her. She's going to try that soon. It'd be better than nothing, and I'm going to pressure her (even if that means telling her to pay for my fuel and I'll do it myself) ... but any threat of reporting her might lead her to go ahead and euthanize the cat as "too much trouble", so.

And this is why I hesitate to encourage more people to adopt, and why I still have all four kittens that were born on my property, plus their mothers. I can't trust 95% of people to understand the responsibility a pet actually is.

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

Well. I certainly hope that after she gets rid of/euthanizes/neglects to death this cat she doesn't go off and adopt another one.

I'm sympathetic to a point: if she didn't expect the cat to be a massive expense and it's not among her spending priorities at that level, that's reasonably fair. The other matters, though, including her going away every weekend (and presumably every day for work), and for a long absence in February (and any others she's had) are inexcusable because the needs of the animal were not only easily anticipated but, iirc from the last time I adopted cats (which I had to get rid of --most likely to be euthanized by the Animal Rescue league-- because in one case he was marking territory all over the house despite having been fixed, and in the other, he was attacking my children. The latter had attacked various sitters, and his vet record had in red marker scroll "violent animal" across the top of the first page. He was fine with me, though, and tolerated Seth and Gideon. When Sam came along, he went nuts. Well. More nuts.) -- anyhow, the last time I adopted cats they specifically asked me if I was going to be home, and how many hours per day, to be with the cats.

[sentientcitizen]

...after several attempts at typeing a post that would express my reaction to this, I find that I'm left with:

W. T. F.

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

I totally hear you; I had a hard time with it, too.

I suggested the apparently radical concept of putting the medication on the food the disorder compels the cat to eat regardless of taste, and that apparently worked in a trial, so the cat should be at least okay. But still ... gah.

[lyr]

Yeah, that would make me hate people, too. Some days it's just embarrasing to be human.

You know, I suspect that possibly she is actually trying to use emotional blackmail to get you to volunteer to come and cat sit for three weeks for free.

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

I actually considered offering for cheap (not free — at least covering fuel or something) if she still didn't have a plan, but first I proposed something radical: Since the disorder makes the cat starving hungry, it doesn't matter if she doesn't want to eat food with the medication on/in it; it's a liquid, and if she gets hungry enough, she'll end up ingesting it. I didn't think that was exactly rocket science, but she reported a few days later that it had, shockingly, seemed to work on a trial basis. So she can't claim the neighbor will feed but not medicate the cat now, not when medication just requires squirting the food. Sigh.