Your cat has nine lives: help him hold on to them!

Cats have nine lives, they say.  Anyone who has owned a cat can see all too well how this saying arose.  Unfortunately, nine lives can well mean at least nine vet treatments - and at least nine claims on cat health insurance policies!

Cats have been called the most accident-prone of pets.   They are free independent spirits, love wandering, and will investigate anything that arouses their curiosity.  We wouldn’t have them any other way.  But this is how they get themselves into all sorts of tight corners.  We have all heard about cats getting stuck up trees – these incidents usually end with rescue.  But other situations don’t always end so happily.

For instance, every year there are literally hundreds of road accidents involving cats.  Cats seem to enjoy doing a last-minute dash across the road in front of a car.  Sometimes they succeed – sadly, sometimes they don’t.

Other reason why cats are brought into vets’ surgeries include:

• Poisoning – there are numerous substances round the house and garden that can poison a cat.
• Swallowing foreign objects.
• Jumping down from heights and misjudging the distance (it’s a myth that cats always fall safely).
• A cat having his tail cut short when dashing through an open door.
• A cat who was snoozing in the washing machine and went through the whole wash cycle.
• A cat who climbed under the bonnet of its owner’s car into the engine and was only  discovered after the car had been driven several miles.
• A cat who got wedged into the S-bend of a lavatory cistern.

The list could go on.  The more you read about the things that can happen to cats, the more you realise that cat health insurance is a worthwhile investment.  Yet astonishingly, only about 13 per cent of cats in the UK are covered by cat health insurance.

If you don’t have cat health insurance, this is the kind of thing you could have to pay for:

• Injuries to a cat from being run over: £700 up to £2,000;
• X-rays: £400
• MRI scan: £1,000
• Fixing one broken leg: £1,000 (usually at least two legs are broken in cat accidents).

Of course, apart from being accident prone, cats are also liable to such diseases as diabetes and kidney failure.  From next year (2008), it is planned that the first cat kidney transplants in the UK will take place – costing £8,000.