- Not a substitute for professional veterinary help.
My husband and I don’t have kids, and pets have always been a big part of our lives. Over the years, we’ve loved and lived with a fur family of cats, dogs, and chickens who kept us company and laughing with their spontaneous zoomies and playful personalities.
Our dogs Marley and Dosha, our cats Iris and Betty, and our chickens Zoe, Loretta, Emmylou, and Dolly have all passed over the rainbow bridge. These days, our kitties, 8 1/2-year-old calico Ramona and our 16-year-old tabby Matilda provide feline friendship to us at home.
Our cats are mature adults and long since spayed. They are up-to-date on vaccinations and receive all shots as recommended by their vet. We haven’t needed flea medication since we moved to the dry part of Washington state where fleas aren’t a year-round issue like they are in Seattle (where we moved from). Both kitties are indoor-only with Matilda occasionally accompanying me outside while I’m working in the yard.
Early in each kitty’s life, with the help of our vet, we diagnosed a fish allergy in Ramona, and a penicillin allergy in Matilda.
Other than these allergies and diet hacks, our cats are healthy. (Well, Ramona is a little overweight.) And as the kitties have gotten older, the costs of providing care and necessities has stabilized. We already have all the toys, beds, towers, scratchers, litter boxes, etcetera, so really most of the costs this year were routine—food, litter, and vet visits.
We didn’t, however, anticipate a diagnosis for our cat Matilda who, on top of taking Gabapentin for arthritis pain and a supplement for her joints, developed an age-related condition. She had to go on a special prescription diet (otherwise we feed both cats the same limited ingredient single protein kibble, Natural Balance’s duck and green pea recipe) for a while as we went back and forth to the vet for care.
To my surprise, we spent less on the kitties than I first estimated.
About Me
- Age range: Mid 40s
- Location: Walla Walla, WA
- Living situation: I live with my husband and we share all costs for everything in the household.
- Pets: We have two pets total. Our kitties, 8 1/2-year-old calico Ramona, and 16-year-old tabby Matilda.
- What are we reviewing: Routine and urgent vet visits, and litter and food purchases.
2022 Spending by Category
- Vet care: $1490
- Food & treats: $868
- Litter & toys: $291
- Sitter from Rover: $302
Monthly Breakdown and Review
January: $371.
This month our biggest pet-related expense was Matilda’s trip to the vet to troubleshoot an ongoing issue: blood in her urine.
For Matilda, this is usually a sign of her fairly frequent bladder infections (an unfortunate side effect of being stressed out by living with a cat she hates—Ramona). Urinalysis, two radiographs, an antibiotic shot, and a pain shot were given.
February: $79.
Another trip to the vet for a long-lasting antibiotic shot for a suspected bladder infection.
March: $17.
Dehydrated chicken and freeze-dried Orijens treats from the local pet store.
April: $143.
Big Chewy food order this month. More treats from the local pet shop and Integrity cat litter from the farm supply store.
May: $231.
Both cats had their rabies vaccinations this month. Another big Chewy order as we tried to find a new food both cats would like (the cats’ previous Natural Balance kibble recipe, turkey and chickpea, had recently changed and both cats began to refuse it) and tried a few low-dust, natural litters.
The litters, which we wanted to try to lower our environmental impact as well as the dust in our home, were significantly more expensive than the clumping clay brand, Integrity, that we had used for years. The one natural litter that the kitties tolerated for a time, Frisco’s unscented clumping grass litter, hovered between $27 and $28 for a 20 pound bag the five times we bought it.
Eventually, we returned to Integrity, which the kitties clearly preferred—a better deal cost-wise (our usual 40 pound bag jumped just a bit from $16.99 to $18.99), but we still have the same amount of dust in our home, and remain on the lookout for a litter that’s easier on the environment.
June: $131.
We started Matilda on a prescription diet to help with her suspected stress-induced urinary issues: Hill’s Science Diet stress kibble and canned food. We refilled her Cosequin supplement and ordered some Churu treats from Chewy for both kitties.
Matilda’s new food, the C/D Feline Stress line, was very expensive: $32 for a four pound bag of kibble, and $49 for a case of 24 2.9 ounce cans. And that was with the $5 coupon offered by our vet! The cats would be on different diets until we discovered Matilda’s specific health issue.
July: $214.
Food, more litter, treats, and catnip toys from Chewy.
August: $402.
Two trips this month for Matilda’s recurring blood in urine issue. It was being treated as a recurring urinary tract infection due to stress, but we would soon learn this wasn’t the case. Her urine was tested and there was no bacteria present.
The vets were stumped. Her senior cat bloodwork from less than a year ago showed kidney and liver values in the normal range. On our two separate visits, we were billed for a urinalysis ($80), an exam ($76—up $7 from 2021), more prescription food, an antibiotic shot ($54) and a pain/inflammation shot ($34).
September: $474.
Back to the vet. Poor Matilda was having a really hard time. The blood in her pee was in and around the litter box and all over the carpet. This time she had another blood draw to see what might be going on—this was $236.
We bought more RX stress food ($49), refilled her Gabapentin ($20/45 count—she takes about a half a pill a day, mixed well into her food), and Tilda received another long-lasting antibiotic shot ($55 this visit). Side note: Between Matilda’s allergy to penicillin and her refusal to take pills orally, we have found the antibiotic shot (Covenia) is the most effective way to deliver antibiotics, however, it’s over twice as expensive as the antibiotic pills some cats will tolerate—around $24 for 7 tablets.
October: $512.
Finally, the culprit was revealed—an overactive thyroid! This was interesting because her bloodwork the year before showed her thyroid was functioning normally, so it was apparent that the issue came on suddenly.
We immediately started her on a Methimazole thyroid pen. This is nice for kitties like Matilda who won’t take pills or eat meds mixed into their food—the pen dispenses a medicated gel you swipe on their inner ear that is absorbed through the skin. Matilda will be on the medication for the rest of her life.
Our costs this month were for bloodwork, the new meds, and a Chewy order, as well as our cat sitter from Rover for a vacation we took in November.
November: $230.
Chewy order, another thyroid pen, and prescription food from the vet (we eventually stopped buying the Science Diet prescription food once Matilda stabilized on her new thyroid medication).
December: $148.
Food order from Chewy, litter, treats, Matilda’s pen refill, and two new cat beds for Christmas.
A Re-cap of Expenses
Total spend: $2951
Did you notice any inflation? Costs across the board seemed to go up slightly—vet exam fees (preventative exams from $69 in 2021 to $76 in 2022), Matilda’s Gabapentin and Cosequin refills, and food, treats, litter (for example, the 40 pound bag of Integrity clay litter that we buy the most often increased from $16.99 to $18.99).
Matilda’s new thyroid meds kept going up by a $1 or $2 with each new refill and once I switched pharmacies (at my vet’s request) it went up even more. I wasn’t happy about that and I’m going to try to switch to Chewy RX for my next refill—it looks to be about $10 less expensive than the new prescription we started through the vet’s recommended online pharmacy, plus we already have an account with Chewy and order from them regularly so we would get free shipping, too.
This said, no costs this year were prohibitive to me buying the kitties’ preferred brands or delaying care for them.
Do you wish you changed how you budgeted? No. In fact, as I check my receipts, I’m seeing that at the vet, sometimes I was charged for “medical progress visits” (Matilda check-ups) and sometimes I wasn’t, and sometimes I was given discounts or free services. I love our vet and the care and service we receive there and I think they waive fees occasionally because we visit so often. So, in spite of inflation and the occasional large vet bill, I wouldn’t consider going anywhere else or budgeting differently.
This year the cats were seen by the vet seven times—that’s a lot for them—plus I was there on other occasions picking up prescriptions and special food. As long as Matilda remains stable on her new medication, I don’t expect our prescription costs to change by much this year—maybe they will even go down a little next year, once I figure out how to order Matilda’s next pen from Chewy.
However, I think (and hope!) we will be visiting the vet less, fees that hopefully won’t be as expensive this year.
What do you wish you knew? I wish I had thought to ask the vet to check Matilda’s blood earlier in the process, but it didn’t occur to me because she had her labs done the year before. She was in a lot of discomfort before the issue was properly diagnosed, and I’m sad about that.
I also wish I had asked my vet about prescriptions through Chewy instead of this other pharmacy they asked me to order from. I had to set up a new account to pay more for a single product, when I could be paying less from a store I already have an account with.
Would you spend the same amount again? More or less? Yes, and we would spend more if needed. With all the joy and happiness Matilda and Ramona bring us, as far as I’m concerned, our pets pay for themselves.
This story chronicles the cost of being a cat parent in 2022. A more recent look into the costs of cat parenthood shows that the annual expenses for one cat ranges anywhere from $325-$1,600, depending on factors such as location to your cat’s health condition.