Pet Insurance Cost Cutting System/MoneySavingExpert.com Discussion

I have three cats in all; a ten yr old British Shorthair and two three year old British Shorthairs. In January the little black 3yr old started losing his fur with no reason for it. In fact even now, we still have no idea what is causing it as it's only in certain places, he doesn't appear to have any irritation and he is showing no signs of hormonally imbalanced behaviour. Three vets, three shoulder shrugs. £110.

The eldest cat went missing the last week of January and I eventually found him at a local vets. Well I say found him, they didn't think the one they'd had in sounded like mine and in fairness I only recognised him after going up close to the cage and saying his name - which he replied to. A car had run over his face not just breaking his jaw but shattering it.

I do have to say that you won't believe how much it cost me to repair his shattered jaw, treat his now blind eye and have him cared for in the vets for a total of 8 days including pain meds, feeding tubes, eye drops, cleaning, collars etc as well as regular check-ups. £235. And even then I was told in no uncertain terms that I should pay my bill in my own time though I hurriedly got it sorted in 2 months. I had £100 from the Blue Cross which is the maximum amount they will contribute and I had around £250 from the local RSPCA who had already guaranteed his initial treatment when he was thought to be a stray.

So whilst you can't depend on the kindness of strangers and you can't expect anything from a charity, just be aware that people aren't always just after money.

If I could afford to get my cats insured rather than just panic when an accident happens and go running to charities I would. And now I'll probably be unable to insure them when I can afford it because one has half his fur missing with no known cause for it and the other is nearly eleven years and has a mashed face!!! I call one semi-blackness and the other semi-mangled. I am considering insuring just the third cat in anticipation.

I am finding it difficult to find a company to insure my guinea pig, just taken out insurance on my rabbit £92 with pet plan with £35 cash back through quidco, but the don't insure guinea pigs.

could anyone point me in the right direction?

This is a very topical thread for me, as I am wondering the same thing as many of you - whether insurance is worthwhile...

We are a multi-cat household and therefore insurance does add up! Also our cats are all indoor cats. When I've spoken to other cat owners they seem to claim a lot due to fights and being run over, both of which are a lot less likely to happen to indoor cats (which can of course get out or fight amongst themselves, but even so...) so in principle our premiums should be smaller, but they're not. So on that basis I've always thought insurance wouldn't be good value for us.

We haven't insured for the last 3 years and have instead saved some money in premium bonds for medical emergencies.

Very sadly, less than 4 weeks ago, one of our cats - a 4 year old girl - was diagnosed with chronic kidney failure. She was referred to a specialist vet who did various tests (including x-ray, ultrasound scan, blood and urine tests) and confirmed the diagnosis the vet had made from the original blood test. (Admittedly they gave more detail, confirming that it was not polycystic kidney disease but some other kind.)

Unfortunately there is no cure, just the possibility of managing the condition depending on how far it has gone. In the end she went downhill very fast and we had her put to sleep because she was in extreme distress. I haven't worked it out exactly but the vet bills added up to over £1000 - and that's without even a happy outcome. We were hoping she would live several years, as apparently some cats with kidney disease do, and of course that would have been expensive.

Vets bills do seem surprisingly large. In my experience (so far) if an animal needs a lot of vet treatment it usually doesn't make it. I think there are people from vet practices posting so hopefully you can correct my jaundiced view, but so far that has how it has panned out for my pets.

We're fortunate in that we can afford to pay the bills, but it would be nice not to even think about it at all and just claim on insurance. When your pet is ill you don't want money to be any sort of consideration, it should all be down to the pet's best interest.

I have to say I think that if I really felt I absolutely wouldn't be able to afford a big emergency like this then I would have to get pet insurance, for peace of mind.

I am finding it tricky to decide. My husband thinks we should just carry on saving into our premium bond insurance pot...

Our dog died of cancer last year, and we probably spent £6,000-£7,000 on him, but luckily got most of it back due to insurance. Don't think we would have had the cancer taken out if we didn't have insurance cos the above is a lot!! of money. He had the tumour taken out and then lasted almost another year before it took him over again.

Now we have PetPlan for our cat and M&S for our dog. Must check the policies though and double check they are the lifetime policy. Think that is why I made a point of going through these companies. Having said that, I should really get the cat changed to M&S as they were slightly cheaper.

My insurance is more than the £16 that someone quoted further up. What makes insurance more expensive for other people? I have a young pedigree staff.

You see, I'm just not convinced about the need for insurance.

We've got 2 house cats that only go outside to pee and never venture beyond the garden. I hear everything that everyone is saying about the nightmare £1000 bills that can arise, but at e.g. £120/yr (quote I got from M&S), that amounts to the best part of £1500-2000 over the typical lifetime of a cat. I'm tempting fate by posting this, but I prefer to self-insure (ie put the money away to cope with things that may arise).

I can appreciate that not everyone may have the flexibility in their finances that I have, so insurance can be worthwhile in that case, but you do need to keep in mind that fundamentally the insurers must be collecting more than they're paying out or they wouldn't be in business...