Old Dog Needs $6,000 Surgery. What Do You Do?

[MineralMan]

89. Those are always very difficult decisions.

We had an elderly cat who got clipped by a car. The result was a broken pelvis and hip. The vet explained that the cat could get hip replacement surgery at the Veterinary School at the University of California, Davis. Cost would have been about $6000. The cat was 15 years old. That cost would have been very difficult for us to cover.

I asked the vet what would happen if we did nothing. She said that cats often healed from this, forming a false hip joint with muscle tissue and did alright, but it wasn't guaranteed that it would work. I asked if the hip replacement surgery was sure to make him OK. "Well, there are no guarantees, and cats sometimes die under anesthesia."

My wife and I went home and talked about it. Our decision was to do nothing. We got the kitty a warming pad and put a shallow litter box nearby. He didn't want to eat, so we rubbed human baby food on his leg several times a day. BTW, that's a sure fire way to get a cat that wont eat to eat. Their cleaning instinct continues even when they're very ill.

After a couple of weeks of the cat lying on that warming pad, it got up and started moving around the house. It had a pretty good limp, but it was moving around. After a couple of months, it seemed as good as new. It could jump up on the bed and do pretty much everything it had ever done.

We moved to Minnesota from California, with that and another cat riding along with my wife in the minivan. It died a couple of years ago at 21 years of age.

On the other hand, we have also had animals put down when they had terrible illnesses, rather than subject them to lengthy, iffy treatments. It's a case-by-case thing, and money is a consideration, too. There's just no single answer that can be applied.