Veterinarian responds to woman's criticisms (while doing her makeup!)

This is quite a cool video firstly because the woman is confident enough to criticise vets in general on social media (TikTok) while doing her makeup! Why do it like that? Is he making a statement? I think she is and it is this: it is a feminist statement saying 'I am a woman and confident in my own skin. Listen to me...' Just a thought.

And I like this very erudite veterinarian. He sits in his car to make a TikTok video in responding to the woman's criticisms. I think the vet's only place (space) of privacy while at work is his car! Good idea.

He responds very nicely. The woman is a bit extravagant in her criticisms. He picks holes in them with ease.

Last point: vets in the UK are currently being criticised in exactly the same way. Too expensive. Rip off businesses because they are often owned and run by big corporations who focus on profit first and foremost and it shows. This video is relevant to the UK situation despite it being made in the USA.

Note: these videos from social media sometimes stop working. Sorry if that has happened.

@thejunglevet lets talk, im genuinely curious to hear you guys’ experiences with your vet #fyp #viral #fyppppppppppppppppppppppp #veterinary #veterinarian #vettok #petowner #petparents #vetoffice #vetclinic #vets #vetdoctor #greenscreenvideo ♬ original sound - Dr. Drew | Veterinarian

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins. Also: sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified. Also, I rely on scientific studies but they are not 100% reliable.

Woman still in debt after £8,000 vet bill for bulldog

You don't want to be in this position where you are torn between the love of your companion animal, in this case a bulldog, and the heavy price that you have to pay with almost no end to forking out money, to fix a very expensive pet medical problem. This is what happens: veterinarians know that cat and dog owners will be very likely to fork out thousands of pounds for medical issues because of their tight emotional connection with their pets. The alternative is to euthanise the companion animal which is unthinkable to many people.

Vet bills are increasing and some dog breeds are inherently prone to chronic illness due to irresponsible breeding practices. Image: MikeB

In this instance, Roy the bulldog fell ill in September. His owner, Tracey Higgins immediately took him to the vet and after several trips the final bill has come to almost £8,200. All from savings and credit cards.

She lives in East London with her husband Kevin. Roy is seven years old. He began to vomit and lost weight quickly.

Initial tests cost £180 but the bill snowballed.

The veterinarian recommended that Roy stay for three nights in an animal hospital where more tests, scans and medications were administered. He was discharged from that hospital with a £3,500 bill at which point Tracey began to panic about the escalating costs. There was no guarantee he would get better but she said that: "We couldn't not have him treated. We are responsible for him and love him."

A part of Roy's small intestine was severely inflamed and over the next three months there were further tests and medications administered costing £3500 and after that further veterinary visits and tests racked up another £995.

As I said pet owners have no choice but to go down this black hole of veterinary costs sometimes with no end in sight.

In the UK, the price of veterinary care and other pet services has jumped about 40% since 2020 according to the Office for National Statistics.

It's a huge dilemma and a great worry for many pet owners. Tracey Higgins had cancelled her pet insurance which cost £250 a month. That alone is a very heavy expense. It covered Roy and the couple's other dog Bonnie. She cancel the insurance policy six months before Roy fell ill.

The couple had regularly saved into an account for vet bills which had accrued £2,000 when Roy needed treatment. They raided other savings and used credit cards to pay the bill.

Higgins said that she was "shocked by the size of the bills and concerned by the ongoing treatment as the cost just kept building up. It was very expensive and we still have some of that debt hanging over us. But we are relieved he has come through it. In some respects it was money well spent because we still have Roy."

UK pet insurance. More excluded treatments. Rising cost of cover.

The Competition and Markets Authority are investigating the £2 billion vet industry because there are concerns about dramatically increased costs as mentioned and that pet owners are overpaying for medicines and being kept in the dark about the cost of treatments.

In addition, it's probably fair to say that the bulldog is an inherently unhealthy animal or perhaps I'm being unfair but the French bulldog for instance, is, in my estimation, the most unhealthy companion animal you can adopt. You can read about that by clicking on this link.

It's a double whammy effect with purebred dogs becoming less healthy because of inbreeding and veterinary bills becoming more expensive because they been bought up by big conglomerates who are trying to squeeze more profit out of what were independent veterinarians focusing on and prioritising medical health treatment rather than making a profit.

Source: The Times July 6th 2024 (main story).

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

NHS in UK makes pet owners disgruntled about private vet prices

Yes, vet prices have surged higher in the UK recently because they want to make more money. It is as simple as that. And they want to make more dosh because the unprofitable, independent vets owned by a partnership of veterinarians have been bought up by big business and big business always has an eye on the profit margin and not so much on the quality of the treatment.

Fictional MRI scan for a dog at a vet clinic. 

Having said all that there is a big obstacle in the UK to citizens' perception of medical treatments: the National Health Service (NHS) which is free at the point of delivery.

It is not actually free but paid for out of taxpayer revenue - over £100 billion annually - but it feels like it is free to the citizens who rely on it for the health needs.

In the UK, health care for humans can be free unless the person can afford and selects private health care while health care for pets is never free but sometimes damnably expensive.

Pet health care is as expensive or more expensive than private human health care sometimes in the UK. But let's say that they are on a par, it is still a lot of money when paying for vet services and products.

And it all goes back to perception. Private pet health care as it always is in the UK seems beyond the means of many because they are used to walking into A&E at a local hospital or a walk-in unit for minor injuries and being seen to free of charge.

I am not condoning some of the rip-off vet prices but I think Brits need to put things in perspective. Health care for pets is an important and expensive business with ever more sophisticated diagnostic and treatment machinery. They are expensive.

The third factor is that more pet owners take out pet health insurance which pushes up the quality and price of treatments. It is a virtuous or unhelpful circle which ends up making veterinary care too expensive for many which in turn results in many pets not receiving the care they need and deserve.

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Dogflation at 9% in Britain against 4% general inflation. Dog owners ripped off.

Image: MikeB

British veterinarians are killing the goose that lays the golden egg. And somewhat mysteriously and without transparency prices of a range of dog products have risen faster than general inflation. To me, being a rather cynical person 😇, the manufacturers and retailers are ripping off dog owners by jacking up their prices after the Covid-19 pandemic. They know that there are more dog owners out there in Great Britain and they want to milk them as much as possible.

Dogflation means the increase in prices of dog related services and products.

That certainly applies to veterinarians. The Times today reports that "125 owners a day give up on pets as dogflation bites". It's a good title with a hint of amusement but this is a serious matter. 😒

The information comes from Dogs Trust, Britain's biggest dog rehoming charity. They say that they are experiencing unprecedented demand. What they mean is that more people than ever are giving up their dogs to the charity.

And the biggest worry for dog owners is veterinary bills. The problem is that independent veterinarians have been bought out by big businesses to form veterinary clinic chains run by accountants who simply prioritise making a big profit rather than providing an excellent service to their patients. 

RELATED: UK pet owners go abroad to cut bills for veterinary treatments.

That's how it works for the big corporations. So Britain has lost those beautiful independent veterinarians. Well, there are still some around but there are far too many vet chains charging inflated prices and they are, as I mentioned in the opening sentence, killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

By that I mean they are reducing the number of pet owners because the cost of owning a pet is too high and because of that there will be less work for veterinary services. You can only charge so much. You can only rip off people so much before they give up and go away. This is beginning to happen.

The Times reports that, "Dogs Trust says record numbers of owners want to give up their animals and some of its kennels are so busy they have waiting lists."

And the problem is the rising cost of dog food, pet insurance and perhaps most importantly veterinary care. And because there are more people giving up pets which is the general trend at the moment, there are less people to adopt them because there are two sides to this problem.

If the mood in the UK is that it is too expensive to own a dog or a cat there are going be less people knocking on the doors of animal shelters looking for a pet to adopt in addition to, as mentioned, more people giving them up.

Last year Dogs Trust received more than 45,000 requests to give up their pet which is the equivalent of 125 per day.

The chief executive of Dogs Trust, Owen Sharp said: "The demand for us to take in dogs is outstripping our ability to meet it at the moment, so we have waiting lists. There is a direct correlation between people struggling to afford to have their dogs and the numbers wanting to give them up."

The charity commissioned Capital Economics, a research company, to work out the value of dogflation versus the general inflation in the country. Dogflation is at 9% while general inflation is at 4%. And Mr Sharp doesn't know why there is this disparity. I know why: it's rip off Britain.

These companies are taking advantage of people. And a survey by Dogs Trust found that veterinary bills are the biggest concern as mentioned.

Mr Sharp said that he was at a loss to explain the steep rise in prices. He said:

"You hear things such as manufacturing costs are higher or raw material costs are higher but you wouldn't really expect them to be disproportionately higher than the production of human food. So is there an issue going on in retail? I don't know. There is a lack of transparency around it, and I don't feel it's getting enough focus at the moment."

Dogs Trust has asked the government to intervene. They want the government to support struggling dog owners by removing VAT on pet food and veterinary services. Pet owners are being disproportionately hit by inflation.

The charity wants as many dog owners to keep their pets as possible and the same would apply to cats. Mr Sharp added that the charity "desperately need the government to step up and play its part for this country's 12 million dogs and their owners."

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

30% of New Zealand cat owners are opposed to cat confinement and almost 50% are ambivalent

NEWS AND OPINION: This is a recent study from New Zealand about confining cats to the home i.e. full-time indoor cats. It's a modern trend and one that is being discussed in New Zealand as it is in many other developed countries. The objective is twofold (1) to keep the cats safe and (2) to keep wildlife safe from cat predation.

The New Zealand government and local governments within the country are particularly concerned about cat predation on wildlife - native species. They have a mentality which is similar to that found in Australia. It's one in which a focus is placed on protecting native species. The free-roaming domestic cat undermines that objective. But what do the citizens of New Zealand think about domestic cat confinement?

A survey of 395 cat owners as reported online on the Newshub website tells us that 30% of New Zealanders are opposed to keeping their cat inside the home full-time. Only 6% of cat owners in New Zealand do it at the moment while 17% are open to the possibility and 48% are unsure about the concept of full-time indoor cats.

This is not resounding support from cat-owning citizens for keeping cats inside the home. It doesn't surprise me. I've written in the past about the motivation of cat owners in keeping their cats indoors all the time and the prime objective is not to protect wildlife but to protect their cats. And in protecting their cats they avoid the emotional distress of their cat being harmed outside perhaps on the road.

RELATED: Places where domestic cats are confined to the home by law.

Ultimately, the bottom line is that normally cat owners keep their cats inside to avoid the distress that they will suffer if their cat is harmed on the road for instance. To use a long word it is an example of anthropocentrism.

This, I would argue, explains why the percentages from this study are rather poor for those people in authority who wants to keep cats inside to protect wildlife.

The general trend in New Zealand and Australia is for the authorities to want to change the law or make demands on cat owners to keep their cats inside. This survey represents somewhat of a pushback from that desire.

Cat advocates in New Zealand think that it is impractical to demand that all cat owners keep their cats inside all-time and it might be too expensive in for example having to build a catio or a cat confinement fence all around the back yard (£4,000). Both these options are fairly expensive. Although a mini-catio is cheap and better than no catio:

RELATED: Mini-catio is better than no catio.

You can't keep a cat locked up inside your home full-time unless you do something to entertain them which means enriching their environment. Hence the need for a catio. Even then it wouldn't be as good as allowing your cat outside in terms of mental stimulation.

The survey doesn't say this but a lot of cat owners want the best for their cat which means they want them to be happy and a domestic cat is happiest when they are out hunting! That sounds very anti-conservation and it is but if you are focusing on the cat only that is your objective.

New Zealand's cat advocates say that making micro-chipping and sterilisation obligatory would be effective over the long term in protecting wildlife. The problem with that plan is that it will take a very long time and it is difficult to enforce. Both these weaknesses in their plan will upset the authorities because they want something tangible quite quickly because they are elected officials and they need to demonstrate results i.e. success.

My personal view is that it's good that New Zealand is discussing these things but the problem is very hard to totally fix. One plank in the solution that has not been discussed in this news media article is education. If every cat owner was perfect they would microchip their cat, they would sterilise their cat, and they would take their cat outside on a lead or if they confine their cat to the home they would make sure that it was thoroughly enriched for their cat's entertainment. Many cat owners are far from perfect of course.

One issue is a lack of knowledge despite many years of discussion about cat caregiving on the internet. Things have improved by there is work to do.

I think education about cat ownership needs to be in the frame here. I would like to see domestic cat husbandry introduced into schools. It could be wider than that. You could have a course about companion animal husbandry for schoolkids. That should and could be part of the curriculum.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

American families dump pets as costs surge

NEWS AND COMMENT: Although some shelters have quite definitely gone against the grain in terms of having too many cats and dogs to rehome [check out the empty shelter], in general, The Times reports that US families are dumping pets as the cost to keep them has become untenable. This is mainly due to inflation and lack of proper long-term budgeting, I believe.

The Times reports that American animal shelters are at their most overcrowded in years. The reason? Fears over the economy. And the end of boom times when many dogs and cats were adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

I feel (I hope not harshly) that many people adopted dogs and cats who shouldn't have. This was impulse adoption without really doing due diligence to figure out the costs and even more importantly to check out the health of the animal that they were adopted. 

That last point particularly applies to the French Bulldog which is one breed which is being dumped on shelters faster than many other breeds. Clearly the owners have found out how expensive they can be to take care of.

RELATED: The French bulldog money pit and dogflation.

However, many adoptions were carried out responsibly. Many people relinquishing their companion animals have lived with them for a long time. It's be tough for some to consider relinquishing their pets.

However, according to the Shelter Animals Count, there are an estimated 250,000 more companion animals in shelters this Christmas then there were over the same period last year.

And it appears that many if not most kennel operators say that they are in crisis. Their facilities were already overcrowded before the Christmas festivities.

As mentioned there was a sharp rise in pet ownership during the pandemic. One in five households in America had a companion animal according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

There are fears over the economy in America and the rising cost of living. The cost of owning a pet is out of reach for many. They decided to abandon their animals.

Kim Alboum, of the Bissell Pet Foundation, an animal welfare organisation, said that "The economy right now is really challenging for a lot of families. And with the housing crisis, people are losing their homes and our having to downsize or move in with others. And this is a recipe for disaster for people that have larger dogs."

The Times reports that shelters are experiencing a big influx of puppies in particular including those of the French Bulldog breed as mentioned. There's been a period of inflation recently in America resulting in vets and pet product businesses raising their prices making it even more expensive to be a pet owner.

I'm told that veterinary prices jumped by 9% from November 2022-November 2023 according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics. Pet food costs rose by 5.6% over the same period.

Sarah Barnett runs an animal shelter in Philadelphia. She says that she has seen hard economic times which has challenged pet owners financially.

She said that people are losing their jobs have to decide between putting food on their table or feeding their companion animal. They've been left with few options.

Obviously, many people giving up their companion animals have had a very long term and good relationships with them. And I agree with Sarah Barnett in that not all people self-indulgently adopted cats and dogs during the pandemic. 

Lesson?

The story really highlights a very valuable point namely that looking after a companion animal properly is expensive. You can't do it properly on a shoestring. Perhaps the first stage in the adoption process is to check your budget, work out the maths, and make sure you maximise the chances that you can and will be able to afford to look after your new friend to a good standard for the remainder of their lives.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Veterinarian nicely explains why their fees SEEM to be expensive when they are not

Vets provide private health care. Screenshot.

Ben the Vet on TikTok explains in his very precise and clear way why veterinary bills seem to be expensive. It is far more likely that the British people will think this because Brits are used to getting medical treatment for themselves which is 'free' at the point of delivery. The NHS is supported from tax receipts. So, it is not exactly free but it feels like it to many.

Veterinarians provide private health care and as you can see in the video their fees for the same operations on humans are much cheaper. 

Vets are cheap and not expensive if truth be told. I don't begrudge vet's fees. They could and perhaps should charge more as many independent vet clinics are selling up to the big corporate owners. This tells us that they find it too hard to operate their own businesses and be a veterinary surgeon at the same time.

RELATED: Why are 80% of new veterinarians in the UK women?

There is another point, I feel. Because of speciesism humans regard themselves as being of a higher 'value' than lesser animals. For that reason, they feel it is okay to spend heavily on their health when needed.

But they don't want to spend heavily on companion animals if they can help it. This leaves them with the feeling that vet's fees are expensive when they are not.

RELATED: Is it right that veterinarians are cheaper than doctors?

And there is one last point. When vets such as occurs in America carry out mutilating operations for no therapeutic benefit to the animal whatsoever, you have to hate them for it. I am referring to cat declawing.

Man, who has eight companion animals struggles to survive under the cost-of-living crisis

In case you have missed it, in the UK, there is a cost-of-living crisis. This is due to inflation and inflation has primarily been caused by Putin's invasion of Ukraine compounded by post-Covid pandemic inflation caused in part, in my opinion, by greedy profiteers who've inflated their prices because people expect there to be inflation.

Ashely Goudou. Image: Mirrorpix. If there is a problem in using this picture here, please contact me in a comment. Thanks.

In this instance, a 20-year-old factory worker, Ashley Goudou, near Bristol, UK, struggles to pay his energy and food bills.

He is paid £6.81 per hour which is substantially under the national minimum wage at £9.18 an hour, which means that he has to work 10 hour shifts seven days a week to make ends meet.

But the key aspect of the story for me, is that he has eight pets according to the Mail Online. These are rescue animals and they cost him £3000 a month to support (seems inflated to me)! He earns £2000 a month!

He says that he bridges that income and expense gap with donations from his veterinary clinic. But to be honest, and I don't want to be critical of a man who is kind animals, he doesn't have to have eight companion animals comprising four cats and four dogs. And the vet can't be a charity to the tune of £1,000 per month. That's ridiculous.

It's expensive maintaining a companion animal. Even one cat is expensive if you do the job properly. Cat food is as expensive as human food. And according to the newspaper, the cost of looking after cats and dogs has surged in recent times in fact tripling from £1000 a month to £3000 a month for this man.

Ashley refuses to give up his pets because he is concerned that nobody else will be able to look after them to the same level.

He told the Mirror Newspaper that: "Handing them into a rescue isn't an option for me. I wouldn't have the heart. I rather not feed myself."

Ashley said that the presence of his animals is good for his mental health. But you could argue, too, that the stress that they place upon him in terms of their maintenance is bad for his mental health. He lives in a one-bedroom flat which is hardly ideal for one man and eight animals.

The underlying point that I want to make is that, in the UK, a lot of people plead poverty because of the cost-of-living crisis but they are not managing their outgoings properly.

You can make savings in a whole range of ways without detrimentally impacting one's life substantially. And in the case of Ashley, I think he needs to talk to his employer who appears to be in breach of the law in paying him two-thirds of the national minimum wage!

It almost looks like that he has an animal hoarding problem. That's being a bit harsh but really you can't have eight pets in a one-bedroom flat.

There are stories in the UK of people abandoning or relinquishing their companion animals to shelters in large numbers because of the cost-of-living crisis. In a lot of cases, I suspect, that the abandoned pets are those that were adopted during Covid in order to keep their owner company during those long lockdown periods.

If a person adopted a dog during Covid and then relinquished them after Covid, we have to be critical of that person. This is because you adopt a companion animal for the life of the animal. There is no other way to do it.

I would like to see less moaning about the cost-of-living crisis and a greater emphasis on how to manage expenses or outgoings in the family home in a way which minimises the impact upon the lifestyle of that person.

What about pay-as-go mobile phone contracts that cost £10 per month and not £50! Buy a cheap smartphone (sim only) and go for a cheap contract. And reduce TV streaming services. That kind of thing. And no takeaways. 

Prepare your own food cheaply. There are ways and means to cut costs.

Cat owners don't need to abandon their cats during the cost-of-living crisis

There are reports online in the news media websites that cat owners are abandoning their cats to shelters as the increased cost-of-living bites. This refers to the UK but I am sure there are inflationary pressures and cost of living pressures in other countries. This is the big discussion at the moment: how to reduce your living costs in order to cope with the dramatic rise in gas and electricity because that megalomaniac Putin is holding the world to ransom by stopping the supply of gas. 

Please note that I'm referring to standard, typical households. I realise that there are many households where costs have already been cut to the bone and I have great sympathy for these people. But I have to talk about typical family homes in this discussion.

I have probably waffled a bit too much in this article but the point of this article is that cat owners need to do all they can reduce household expenses other than those expenses to do with maintaining a domestic cat and providing them with excellent care. This is because it is far easier to shave off costs on households running costs then it is to cut corners and skip on the funding needed to provide excellent cat caregiving. 

Cat owners don't need to abandon their cats during the cost-of-living crisis. Think thermostat! ✔️

The reason why electricity goes up when the price of gas goes up is because there are gas fired power stations generating electricity. And the reason why the cost of wholesale gas has gone up dramatically in the UK even though we do not import gas from Russia or at least very little of it is because wholesale gas is priced internationally.

I don't think you need to abandon your cat to a shelter. What cat caregivers need to do is sit down and think very seriously about how they can reduce their household expenses OTHER THAN those relating to cat caregiving. 

They may surprise themselves that great savings can be made. And the key in making savings to household expenses is this: the price of gas and electricity has risen about fourfold i.e. it is four times as expensive now as it was about a year ago. This is shocking to many people but because it is so expensive small changes in reducing the amount of gas used can bring equally dramatic reductions in costs.

On the conventional formula (at previous gas and electricity prices), it is said that if you turned down the central heating thermostat by 2°C you can save £200 a year. That's based upon the previous costs of gas. If the cost is four times higher the savings will be four times greater. Also, I am making a presumption that you will be turning down your thermostat from about 22°C to 20°C or from 21°C to 19°C. 19°C is perfectly acceptable if you wear warm clothing indoors.

Therefore, you might save £800 a year by simply turning down the thermostat and putting on a nice warm dressing gown! You will then be able to keep your cat because the cost of keeping a cat is about £1500 max. per year.

Reducing your heating costs, in effect, halves cat caregiving costs. And you can turn off the thermostat in the room that you don't use in your home. Or you can turn off the central heating completely and use a small bar heater to heat the area around you.

There are other aspects of living which can be adjusted to save costs. You can turn off all your appliances and devices, which are usually on standby, at the socket save around a hundred pounds a year potentially. Just these two aspects of living should be able to allow you to keep your cat.

And I don't think people should be skimping on the cost of food and veterinary care. Also, there are some good aspects to this cost-of-living crisis as it is called. It will make people think harder about how they live and where their money goes. It will cut some of the fat out of their lives. It will make people more resilient. It will make people more self-discipline, hopefully.

It will help reduce food waste. There is an awful lot of food waste in the UK and other countries. If people bought food more carefully and ate all the food that they bought they would save hundreds of pounds annually. This would offset the cost of keeping a cat. Do you eat all the food that you buy?

I do not want to sound like a saint but I eat 99.9% of the food that I purchase. And I do not think that it is that difficult to achieve this. It's a question of building up habits. People become deeply entrenched in habits and don't see how they can change them. But the trick is to make the change, to make that first step and then you set up new habits which become perfectly acceptable but which seemed unacceptable beforehand.

The conclusion is to think hard about surrendering your cat and before you do so work out how you can reasonably cut household expenses, particularly with respect to gas and electricity because it is here that the best savings can be made.

California earmarks another $45,000,000 to reduce killing in animal shelters

This comes on the heels of a prior commitment of $10,000,000. Unfortunately, its allocation is a missed opportunity to maximize lifesaving according to Nathan Winograd who gave me the heads up in an email.

What no-kill means. Image: MikeB

In a Facebook post, Nathan Winograd reports on the signing by the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, of legislation that provides $45 million to help animal shelters reduce killing. You can read legislation if you wish by clicking the following link: https://bit.ly/3zMqJ8v

You got to be a bit of a nerd to read it but it is educational. Having read Winograd's Facebook post I was interested to read that initiatives like this one to save the lives of animals at shelters and to drive them to a no-kill status benefit the economy of the state, city or county concerned. 

They are 'revenue positive' as he calls it. He refers to a University of Denver study as an example which found that one city's no-kill initiative yielded over $157 million in a positive economic impact to the community over the first six years, which represented a more than 400% return on investment by the city.

He says that other studies have come to similar conclusions. There are direct cost savings apparently in not killing animals at shelters. In California a provision of the Animal Shelter Law 1998 saved 85,000 animals annually which corresponded with cost savings of over $3 million. These costs relate to the killing process and the destruction of the remains of the animals. Saving such as this have been backed up in the states of Florida, Michigan, Oklahoma and Minnesota.

Attaining statewide no-kill status in all shelters would appear to benefit the economy of that state as well as save countless thousands of lives of unwanted animals who become wanted and loved. That seems to be a win-win situation to me.

Is dry cat food cheaper than wet cat food?

I am going to have to take a guess at this. Let's call it a guesstimate based upon lots of experience. It is difficult to be precise because there are many variables such as the quality of cat food which does very considerably as we know. It is probable that the price per kilogram of dry cat food is similar to the price per kilogram of wet cat food of the same quality. In this discussion the context is the UK.

Dry cat food is cheaper than wet cat food of the same quality because there is les waste.  Image: MikeB based on images from Pixabay (copyright free).

Alhtough it is hard to make that assertion because it is difficult to compare quality. However, I believe it is a fair starting point. The big factor in working out whether dry cat food is cheaper than wet cat food is how much waste a cat owner has in respect of dry and wet foods.

It is probably accepted by nearly everyone that is far more likely that you will waste some wet cat food compared to dry cat food. In my estimation, across the board, on average, cat owners probably throw away about 25% of the wet cat food that they buy for their cat. It goes into the waste bin or it feeds the local fox. Although foxes are not that keen on thrown-away cat food in my opinion and my experience.

So this last factor in the calculation swings the result towards dry cat food being cheaper than wet cat food. This is because you simply do not waste any dry cat food, also in my experience. Yes, dry cat food does go off eventually but it can remain in the bowl for long enough for it to be fully eaten without any wastage whatsoever.

It comes down the wastage; the wastage factor is the key factor in this calculation. In the UK, it seems that both wet and dry cat food costs about £5-£6 per kilogram. I'm referring to decent quality food. It's expensive in the UK. One reason why you don't want to waste it. But it is difficult not to because domestic cats can be quite pernickety and picky.

They might give you the impression that they are hungry and then they turn their noses up and walk away from the bowl. They will have their favourites but they will go off their favourites for a while. You have to provide variation. Or they will eat part of the food offered. These are reasons why you end up with some waste. In hot climates wet cat food can go off and become inedible for a cat within an hour or so.

If you make a mistake about whether your cat is hungry or not the whole bowl of food can go into the bin. Perhaps I've been generous in favour of wet cat food when I say that 25% of it is wasted. Or perhaps in some households they will say that they never waste any of it. Like I said I have to rely on a guesstimate and my own experience.

My conclusion is that dry cat food is cheaper than wet cat food on a price per meal basis. That does not mean that cat owners should rely exclusively on dry cat food. I think by now, or I hope by now, that cat owners realised that the better cat food is high quality wet but dry can be used for night-time grazing which is what I do. The reason: wet is more natural and mirrors the standard prey of the domestic cat, the mouse in containing around 70-80% water. Cats needs that. They don't make it up in drinking more.

As an aside, if you don't like your cat bringing back live or dead mice or birds then a study encourages cat owners to provide their cat with the highest possible wet cat food with meat protein and without grain. This may curb your cat's hunting instincts. It is suggested in the study that protein from plants in cat food lacks certain micronutrients which the domestic cat tries to make up by hunting and eating mice and other small mammals and birds. They need that meat protein or cat food based on plant-proteins with these additional micronutrients added as a supplement. Further work is being carried out on that.

Bengal Cat Cost

I have a section of a page and links to Bengal cat cost. Please check it out if you wish. There are prices for USA and UK. I would expect the prices to be similar on mainland Europe as well. Prices are dependent on quality (how well the cat matches breed standard and character and bearing generally). You will be buying a "pet" not a breeder. The prices are very different for breeding cats for obvious reasons.

Don't forget that the purchase price is just the initial cost. Over the lifetime of the cat, the cost might be $10,000. Expectations should be realistic. Healthy cats are cheaper that sick ones. Make sure your breeder is good and responsible please.