I pay $25 a month for pet insurance, and it's worth every penny

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• My pet insurance is $25 a month, and I get great care for my cat with affordable co-pays.
• I've seen too many people get hit with big bills for their pets — including my husband's family and my sister.
• Pre-existing conditions can make it hard to get pet insurance, so it's good to plan ahead.

I'm a 31-year-old journalist living in Portland, Oregon. I have always said I had a cat-shaped hole in my heart, but moving around so often in my 20s, I wasn't able to adopt my first cat with my husband until a few years ago.

My husband and I adopted Poppy, then a two-year-old probably-tabby, from the Sherwood Cat Adoption Center out in Oregon's wine country. Now, she's four and thriving (and so advanced!), and as a first-time cat mom, I do my best to do everything possible for her happiness and health — including paying for pet insurance.

I pay $25 a month for pet insurance

I have Fetch pet insurance, which costs about $25 a month for one cat (although it started at $22). It was easy to research and sign up online. Fetch has an app, so even if I'm not home, I can upload documents right in my pocket. It gives us peace of mind to be able to take care of our fur baby as if she were our daughter.

About $25 a month for pet insurance compared to possible vet bills in the thousands to keep our household tiger healthy is totally worth it to us.

The first time I took Poppy to get vaccinated, the vet asked if we should give her the cat leukemia shot and a rabies shot on the same day. I said we might as well, thinking I wanted my pet to have every vaccine, of course.

Unfortunately, having both shots made Poppy sick. She's only seven pounds and might have been just too small. She stopped being playful and didn't eat for a whole day. After 24 hours, I took her back to the vet.

Fetch covered most of Poppy's kitty-IV fluids, and I only paid $35 cash. She was perking up already on the car ride home.

Pet insurance helps cover her annual vet visit, where we make sure Poppy is up-to-date on her vaccines for cat leukemia and other pests.

I've seen just how hard paying for pet care can be

Pet insurance is absolutely worth it to me, and I will continue to subscribe. That's partially because of the many crowdfunding campaigns I have seen for people whose pets have had accidents or leukemia and need expensive care or emergencies. I want Poppy to live with me for as long as possible, and I want to be a good cat parent and steward of her quality of life.

It's also because I've learned firsthand how expensive pet care can be. For example, my husband Marshall's childhood cat Cuddles was run over by a car and had a pin in his leg for weeks, costing his parents a whole paycheck back in the 1990s.

My sister Rose Rogers, a zillennial living in Seattle, adopted her first cat in November 2023 — Mariner, a one-year-old domestic rescue cat with black fluffy fur. Mar was a rescue who needed some upfront care — plus more that wasn't originally apparent. Rose used to have pet insurance for Mar through her job, which gave her access to Nationwide pet insurance for about $8 a month out of her paycheck.

Rose is a professional bassoon player for symphonies and orchestras and, like me, moved around a lot in her early 20s. Being in between jobs, her pet insurance lapsed. She intended to subscribe to a private pet insurer but didn't sign up fast enough before an emergency came up.

As Rose was looking into getting more pet insurance coverage, Mar started to act sick and unusual — throwing up, hiding, and not playing. She took her to the vet urgent care because it was after hours on the weekend to take her temperature and get an X-ray and an IV, but the next day, it escalated to the pet hospital. At first, the vets thought Mar could be sick with feline infectious peritonitis, which is a mutated coronavirus for kitties, but they eventually eliminated that diagnosis to an unknown end. Mar had inflamed organs, a high fever, and wasn't eating or drinking.

Pre-existing conditions can make it harder to get pet insurance

Eventually, after staying overnight at the pet hospital for four or five days, Mar was prescribed antibiotics, which solved the issue.

Without pet insurance, the whole scenario cost Rose $5,000 cash.

Now, Rose is having trouble signing up Mar for pet insurance due to her pre-existing condition, which is undiagnosed. Now, doing research on pet insurance, Rose expects to pay a higher cost than before.

If there's an opportunity to mitigate risk for the ones that you love, it's a no-brainer for us to purchase pet insurance. We want to take advantage of that to ensure the future health and long life of our beloved pet.