Forum menu
Thinking again about pet insurance.
Currently have 2 moggies. Both neutered, 2 year old male, 5 year old female. Both healthy, normal cats. Stay in the house or go out on a roof. They're the only cats who go out there.
No insurance currently - just putting around £60 a month in the bank for them.
Was always put off by the yearly renewal/pre-existing conditions trap. A guy at my old work told me he had policy that didn't have that trick in it and was about £20 a month.
Anyone got any recommendations?
Just tell them regularly "don't get ill, the trip to the vets is a one-way ticket" 🙂
I'd carry on doing what you're doing, personally.
[i]No insurance currently - just putting around £60 a month in the bank for them.[/i]
Puts into perspective another current thread where a chap was looking at private health insurance for himself and thought the £40pcm was expensive...
FWIW we've 2 spaniels and a couple of horses and don't spend anywhere near that money with the vets for all of them
If you do choose to get insurance, petplan lifetime policy seems to be the best. Annual policies are cheaper but can be tricky as any long term condition gets excluded from the next renewal as it is an existing condition. That means annual policies only really cover accidents or an illness that they haven't had before.
We self insure for our two and were quids in until one of them ate a mouse/rat which had eaten some poison. £960 bill! We've had each one in the vets with unexplained illnesses over the last 3 years at £500 a pop as well, so two cats, 3.5 years with us and £2k total in vets bills = £24/month per cat.
I have 4 cats and pay about 7 quid each with Animal Friends. Wouldn't be without it.
£50/year for our cat with M&S. £3k per illness/injury per 12 month period
Was advised by the vet that cats rarely need more than £2k of treatment. If they're that poorly they don't survive
I pay £11 per month for my 2 with Argos pet insurance. Its the lifetime illness one too.
I think our two are on a basic Petplan annual policy. Think it's around £24 for the pair of them. It's certainly paid for itself a couple of times already. Last time Luna came down with some sort of fever, (Probably from something that fought back!), ended up spending a night at the emergency vets, then another night at our regular vet. Add that to a course of antibiotics and a couple of blood tests....£495. Of which I got everything back bar £50.
My mate's much loved family cat got run over by some git in a car, leaving it for dead. He also had her covered with Petplan which was lucky as the surgery etc ran into the thousands, but again he only had to pay a fraction of that because he'd taken out the insurance plan. As my mate put it at the time, it's piece of mind at the cost of a couple of weekly Starbuck's coffee.
C.
So, if you have 4 cats, and unless they are chipped of course, could you get away with one insurance policy ?
They would all have to be the same color and gender of course.
(for the record, I don't have 4 cats, well not yet anyway)
FWIW we've 2 spaniels and a couple of horses and don't spend anywhere near that money with the vets for all of them
You mean you haven't yet spent anywhere near that... The really expensive vets visits aren't generally routine after all!
Thanks for the tips guys.
Petplan would be £25 a month for both of them with the lifetime cover.
I will admit that the main driver for this is that I was looking over our various bank accounts and the cats have got nearly £2000 in theres. That's more than my wife!
New bike time for YGH. Ultegra hydraulics will do nicely.
I pay about £9-10 per month iirc for 2 with Tesco for £3k of cover.
I would suggest this is a little light as one got run over and had a broken pelvis and hip. That cost £3k to fix, but we had to opt for a little less invasive operations and more cage time to get it down to that. £5k would have been the mid-range fix.
Tesco's paid up very quickly following each claim, so no complaints.
Speaking as a cat person, if I was looking down the barrel of a vet bill running to four figures I'd be fixing it with a new cat.
will admit that the main driver for this is that I was looking over our various bank accounts and the cats have got nearly £2000 in theres. That's more than my wife!
I'd stop adding to it then and use the £60 for something else without paying pet insurance. 2k will cover most eventualities. If either of my cats needed more than 2k of treatment it would be one quick trip to the vet for them. We've owned cats and dogs for 30 yrs without a bill bigger than £500 at a time.
So freeze the 2k. Start bike fund using the £60 formerly going to the cat fund along with the £20 you'd pay for ins if you didn't have 2K in the bank. £80 a month will soon buy a bike.
I'm now looking into insurance after one of our cats became ill, I'd say in this last year we have spent close to £2000 on vets bills, for the first 17 years of his life he was a fit and healthy cat, this last year has be a compleatly different story though.
Our vets has recommended that we have a look at Petplan for our other cat
[i]You mean you haven't yet spent anywhere near that... The really expensive vets visits aren't generally routine after all! [/i]
One horse is 15 the other older, the two dogs are 9 and 3.
With the exception of routine check-ups etc I don't reckon we've spent £1000 in all that time, and most of that will be have been for the 'expensive' horse.
I'm a big fan of pets, but I shudder at the cost of fixing them. Can't help thinking "beyond economic repair" would come into my thinking!