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1:35pm July 21, 2014

amorpha-system:

Thank you so much to everyone who’s reblogged the post about my roommate’s ill kitty. (The original post is here for those who want a brief overview of the situation.)

We’ve actually revised the fundraising goal, so you may want to check the donation page again.  I realize it’s often hard for people to give money when they don’t know exactly what it’s going to be used for, and my roommate’s initial fundraising goal was based on a worst-case treatment expense scenario, so we’ve revised it to just cover the cost for the initial round of tests— we have no idea what costs for the treatment will be.  But the breakdown of that cost at this point is basically:

-$300 for numerous blood tests plus the standard vet fees and hazardous material disposal fees, and a shot of antibiotics they gave her

-$650 as the estimated cost for the full first round of tests and hazardous material disposal fees— a lymph node biopsy, two X-rays and an ultrasound.  I can actually scan the printout of the vet’s estimate (just with name/address information covered over) if anyone wants to see it.

So right now we’re focusing on making sure we can pay for those initial tests, and then we’ll get on to figuring out what the cost of treatment will be.

Again, thank you so much to everyone who has signalboosted this.  She can’t be legally registered as a service animal any more since the laws around service animals in the US were changed, but she does provide a lot of emotional support for my housemate and helps her out with physical disability issues.  My housemate couldn’t get health insurance for a long time due to “pre-existing conditions,” and as a result, a lot of her health problems went untreated for years, including one that causes her to periodically stop breathing in her sleep and one that causes her to reflux in her sleep.  Meimei has gotten good over the years at noticing when she’s showing “warning signs” and will walk on her and meow loudly to wake her up.  If you’ve ever seen anyone stop breathing in their sleep before, or wake up choking on vomit, you know it’s pretty frightening.  She also helps out with depression and anxiety, gets in her lap and kneads on her when she’s upset and stressed out, etc.  So she serves as a de facto disability support animal at this point, she just can’t be legally registered as such (mostly, as I understand it, due to stupid changes in the laws based on non-disabled people’s paranoia about “cheating the system.”  We know other people who have had this happen to cats who helped them out with physical and psychological disability issues— all of the ones who had service animal status were stripped of that status when the laws were changed.)

By the way, she can still be an assistance animal under housing law, she just can’t be a service animal under federal law.