Originally Posted by WhiteTiger
It's just so hard to know if medical will fix a problem with an animal, as well. The treatments might work. They might not. Last year, for New Years Eve, our cat went crazy. Something inside her little cat brain 'broke' as far as we could tell. She went from being a nice, happy, somewhat social cat to freaking out and attacking anything that moved near her, including my wife and I.
We got her to the vet (after a 30 minute fight to get her into the cat carrier, at which point the Building Manager came by since she thought that we were out and the cat had broken something she was howling so much/loud) and she's so aggressive and mean that the vet can't get within paw's reach of the front gate of the carrier. They eventually gassed her and ran a bunch of tests, pumped her stomach and several other things.
Everything came back negative. She hadn't eaten anything recently. She hadn't gotten into anything. There was no excuse for her behavior.
Between all the tests and associated costs, we figure we dropped around 4 grand. And we STILL don't have any idea what happened or why it did. For about 3 months after, she would hiss and attack any stranger in the house. On a bad day, she'd hiss and attack my wife and I.
I hate to say that it got to the point where we were considering having her put down. We lived in a tiny 1 bedroom, and if the cat was having a bad day, the only solution was to lock her in the bedroom until she calmed down.
She's much better now, a year later. She's not fully recovered her enjoyment of people who aren't my wife and I, but she will tolerate houseguests. She will even let them pet her occasionally. We recently had a friend over who has 5 kids, all under 10. She brought the 4 youngest with her. Our cat wasn't impressed, but she only hissed once at one of the younger ones (who knows to be very careful around our cat, and back away if she starts to hiss) who was getting a little too friendly.
Even though the vet gave us no real answers, I still look at that 4k as money well spent. I'm sitting here typing this, and the cat is under my computer desk, laying across my feet. I move them, and she grumbles and moves to where ever I have and lays back on top of them.
This has turned into a long-winded way of saying that my wife and I know that we'd have and be able to spend about 5K on our 'kid'. What impressed me...was that when this was all happening, and money was getting really tight (It happened JUST on NYE, as the Christmas bills were slated to start rolling in...) we had both our families and 3 very good friends step up with offers of money to help us find a solution to the problem.
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