It was a very sad weekend for me and my girlfriend.....we had to have one of her cats put down. Needless to say, that's a heart-breaking, gut-wrenching decision to have to make, and it was made all the worse by the uncaring vets who refused to see the cat without an appointment!
This particular cat was 19 years old, going on 20, so she definitely had a good run, but her time had clearly come. She had stopped eating, was barely able to move (at one point staying on the bed for nearly 48 hours), was no longer able to use the litter box, and was losing weight at an alarming rate.
This past Wednesday, she decided enough was enough and called the local vet. After explaining the situation, the vet's office said that since Hoochie wasn't a patient there, they had to treat her as a new patient, that soonest they could see her was the following TUESDAY, and that the cat would probably be dead by then!
Um, what??? It would be one thing to say that if the cat was healthy and just needed a checkup, or if the cat only had a minor-ailment and wasn't at the end of its life. It's quite another to refuse an emergency case. Heck, if they had just said something like "I'm sorry but we're extremely busy and can't accept any walk-ins today" it might've been OK, but they didn't. I mean, could you imagine a hospital emergency room turning away a dying person just because they weren't a regular patient there??
My GF was so upset after that call that she couldn't bear to call another vet and have to explain it all over again, so she decided to wait. Amazingly, the cat kept hanging on, and was still alive when I came down Friday evening.
Saturday morning I checked and the cat was still alive, but clearly was getting worse. She'd crawled off her blanket to the water bowl we'd left nearby, but could not get back to the blanket afterwards. I kept the cat company for a while and realized she'd lost so much weight that no matter where you patted her you could feel bone. She hadn't been nearly as thin only a week prior. Right about then she also started meowing pitifully.
I looked up at my GF and told her this couldn't go on any longer. The poor thing was just slowly starving to death. She agreed, and this time called the vet where Hooch was actually registered as a patient.....
....Only to be told again that an appointment was required, and the soonest they could see her was 4:45 that evening, a full 5 hours away!!
That was just too much for my GF.....neither of us could bear to keep watching the poor cat suffer for another 5 hours; it had been too long already. She was absolutely beside herself in tears. Since she couldn't make another call, I ended up calling a 24-hour emergency vet clinic a couple of towns away, and thankfully they said we could come right in.
Man, I'm telling you that vet was a Godsend after being turned away twice already. They were extremely professional about everything and treated us and the cat with every bit of dignity and respect that the situation called for. All of the staff were exceedingly polite and compassionate. The receptionist even offered us some water without being asked. I know that sounds minor but I thought it was a very nice gesture under the circumstances.
After it was all over they put the body in a very nice, sturdy, cardboard coffin with a comfy blanket in it at no extra charge. They even waived the usual fees that 24-hour emergency vets typically add due to the inherently costlier service they offer, billing us only for the deed itself. AND they offered to call Hoochie's regular vet to inform them that she had been put down, thus saving us the additional anguish of having to make that call ourselves.
Honestly, I don't think there was anything they could possibly have done to make the process any gentler or easier, and that's saying a lot since neither myself nor my GF had ever witnessed a pet being put to sleep before.
Seriously though, I can't get over the fact that not one but two vets refused to see us without a prior appointment. I mentioned that to my mother, who had to bring a couple of our cats in for checkups the next day, and she mentioned it our my family's regular vet, and THEY were absolutely flabbergasted. They couldn't believe that any vet would refuse to help a suffering dying animal just because it wasn't a regular patient and/or didn't have an appointment.
*phew* That took longer than I had intended.....I just had to get it off my chest. I'll try to post pictures of the kitty after I get home (it's totally dead at work right now but i can't get on Facebook from here)
This particular cat was 19 years old, going on 20, so she definitely had a good run, but her time had clearly come. She had stopped eating, was barely able to move (at one point staying on the bed for nearly 48 hours), was no longer able to use the litter box, and was losing weight at an alarming rate.
This past Wednesday, she decided enough was enough and called the local vet. After explaining the situation, the vet's office said that since Hoochie wasn't a patient there, they had to treat her as a new patient, that soonest they could see her was the following TUESDAY, and that the cat would probably be dead by then!
Um, what??? It would be one thing to say that if the cat was healthy and just needed a checkup, or if the cat only had a minor-ailment and wasn't at the end of its life. It's quite another to refuse an emergency case. Heck, if they had just said something like "I'm sorry but we're extremely busy and can't accept any walk-ins today" it might've been OK, but they didn't. I mean, could you imagine a hospital emergency room turning away a dying person just because they weren't a regular patient there??
My GF was so upset after that call that she couldn't bear to call another vet and have to explain it all over again, so she decided to wait. Amazingly, the cat kept hanging on, and was still alive when I came down Friday evening.
Saturday morning I checked and the cat was still alive, but clearly was getting worse. She'd crawled off her blanket to the water bowl we'd left nearby, but could not get back to the blanket afterwards. I kept the cat company for a while and realized she'd lost so much weight that no matter where you patted her you could feel bone. She hadn't been nearly as thin only a week prior. Right about then she also started meowing pitifully.
I looked up at my GF and told her this couldn't go on any longer. The poor thing was just slowly starving to death. She agreed, and this time called the vet where Hooch was actually registered as a patient.....
....Only to be told again that an appointment was required, and the soonest they could see her was 4:45 that evening, a full 5 hours away!!
That was just too much for my GF.....neither of us could bear to keep watching the poor cat suffer for another 5 hours; it had been too long already. She was absolutely beside herself in tears. Since she couldn't make another call, I ended up calling a 24-hour emergency vet clinic a couple of towns away, and thankfully they said we could come right in.
Man, I'm telling you that vet was a Godsend after being turned away twice already. They were extremely professional about everything and treated us and the cat with every bit of dignity and respect that the situation called for. All of the staff were exceedingly polite and compassionate. The receptionist even offered us some water without being asked. I know that sounds minor but I thought it was a very nice gesture under the circumstances.
After it was all over they put the body in a very nice, sturdy, cardboard coffin with a comfy blanket in it at no extra charge. They even waived the usual fees that 24-hour emergency vets typically add due to the inherently costlier service they offer, billing us only for the deed itself. AND they offered to call Hoochie's regular vet to inform them that she had been put down, thus saving us the additional anguish of having to make that call ourselves.
Honestly, I don't think there was anything they could possibly have done to make the process any gentler or easier, and that's saying a lot since neither myself nor my GF had ever witnessed a pet being put to sleep before.
Seriously though, I can't get over the fact that not one but two vets refused to see us without a prior appointment. I mentioned that to my mother, who had to bring a couple of our cats in for checkups the next day, and she mentioned it our my family's regular vet, and THEY were absolutely flabbergasted. They couldn't believe that any vet would refuse to help a suffering dying animal just because it wasn't a regular patient and/or didn't have an appointment.
*phew* That took longer than I had intended.....I just had to get it off my chest. I'll try to post pictures of the kitty after I get home (it's totally dead at work right now but i can't get on Facebook from here)
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