Hey, I’m Rae. I have two beautiful elderly cats: Olive (18) and Jura (11). They are my everything. However, this past year age has been catching up to them and the vet bills have been catching up to me.

Back story on these babies: I moved in with a roommate in 2018 who had Olive and Jura. I fell in love with these two. When the time came a couple years later for that roommate to move out, they couldn’t take the cats and the cats became mine. I have continued to love them and do everything I can to be the best cat parent I can. I’ve gotten them on better food, they’ve got more toys than they know what to do with, and we’ve been working with the vet the last couple of years to help them transition into their elderly cat years as smoothly as possible. But things haven’t been smooth lately.

Olive got diagnosed with early kidney disease last summer and has been on special food and we’ve been monitoring them closely. We know the kidney disease is terminal but they had been doing great until this summer… in July we have had two emergency vet visits and I nearly lost Olive during one of those visits. Olive has been battling a bad UTI that is likely kidney disease related and going to the vet stressed their little body and heart out so much they went into respiratory distress. This means Olive also got diagnosed with end stage heart disease. We’re at the end of life and making Olive as comfortable as possible but that has been expensive. Olive is worth every single bit of it though as they are my soul kitty.

THEN we add Jura in, who has historically been a more healthy kitty… but at his last vet visit we discovered he, too, had something ailing him. He has some serious gum and teeth issues (likely from age) that will require a dental surgery and a removal and cleaning so he is also comfortable (and hopefully he can be healthy again for a little while). But this comes at, you guessed it, another staggering vet bill.

And then there’s me, their dad. I’m at the end of my means with the monthly credit card payments because of the vet bills. I’m struggling financially to be able to take care of my own needs. So here I am…. Again. This is not what I want to do. This honestly sucks to do. You don’t have to give but if you want to it’s here. I appreciate everything.