My cat ate some thread. The vet said she had to have surgery right away. We asked if we could think about it?

How much thread are we talking about? Was the cat exhibiting signs of being in distress? Did you actually see the cat eat the thread?

Never, never let any doctor scare you into something that you're unsure of. You can always get a second opinion. You may have recourse IF they did not give you and estimate and IF you did not sign anything. Otherwise, you'll be held responsible to pay, but a responsible clinic would have definitely given you an estimate before doing any kind of surgery. That way, you would have been able to set up a payment plan beforehand if needed instead of getting socked with a bill of a grand.

I've done my share of vet dissing in here, but on this one, I think the vet did the right thing (although that seems a bit pricy to me).

Thread will almost never show up on an x-ray, so just doing that would be a waste of time. Unfortunately for cat owners, thread can cause huge problems in cats and since it's so small, the only way to know for sure is open the cat up.

If it was me, I'd ask for a breakdown in charges. If this was an emergency vet visit, I guess it makes more sense, but it seems very high to me.

I really don't see what else you could do other than check with carecredit or those orgs that help pay vet bills. I assume you 've already asked her if she'll take payments.

Many vets won't perform the surgery without payment first, so maybe she'd be more likely to accept payments if it's the only way she'll get the money.

But I wouldn't second guess what she actually did - it sounds about right.

The vet did the right thing. Swallowing thread is very serious and your cat could have died. Just because no thread was found, doesn't mean the operation wasn't necessary. It was you who took your cat to the vet and said he had swallowed thread. The only responsible thing was to do as the vet recommended. It's possible the thread had passed out the other end, been vomited up or chewed into smaller pieces that didnt' pose a threat, but it was important to find out. My cat swallowed some string from a cat toy last year. He vomited up a small section but there was still a long piece missing. The vet operated but didn't find anything. She did say that his intestines were inflamed and pushed to one side, so something had been going on. The surgery cost £400. If there was any possiblity that your cat had thread inside him, the best thing was to carry out surgery to look for it.

Every vet tech I've asked has had experience with a cat dieing on the table due to thread wrapped around the intestines so tight the insides looked like cauliflower. The surgery is needed fast, not days later. It's a life threatening thing for a cat to eat thread.

Don't second guess on this, thread is a killer of cats. I talk to a lot of vet techs, and ALL of them have stories of cats who ate thread and were unsaveable, the thread tangles and knots in the intestines, eventually pulling them into a tight bunch so it looks like cauliflower--and then it starts slicing through the intestines once it can't tighten up any more.

This is almost impossible to help in a cat after a certain amount of time, you have to do something fast. Be extremely grateful that the cat wasn't bundled in the intestines like that. Any thread is a danger, but the clear plastic type thread off the bottoms of curtains seems to be the one I hear about the most. Cats go into shock and die, once it gets too far. Any vet who was told by an owner that their cat ate thread or a threaded needle has to do work very quickly to save the cat. Since thread doesn't show up on x-rays, they go by what the owner tells them and make the decisions based on that.

You told her the cat ate thread? Then you paid $1000 for surgery on the cat? Sounds like she acted in the best interest of the animal, based on the information you gave her. Why did you go to the vet anyway if you wanted to wait and see what happened?

Thread wouldnt show up on an Xray !!

I actually think the vet did the RIGHT THING but $1000 (just worked out what that is in £'s) seems like alot of money (unless vet treatment costs alot more in the USA) !

I'm not sure what you can do about it though, Have a chat with the vet and see if he will lower the price

Cats do that - they sometimes swallow stuff like this. It's called a Linear Foreign Object. Ask your vet what the consequences are if you don't do the surgery, or if there are other ways to remove it, like with an endoscope (see first link below)

on the 2nd link, see the 2nd paragraph under the heading "foreign bodies in animals".

It's the number one mistake kitten owners make all the time. Letting there cat play with wool. It does sound a lot of money though. I'm surprised if all Vets ain't living it up on what they charge. All I can say is talk to consumes affairs see what they say.

Yikes, what a bad vet. Made you and your poor kitty go through an unnecessary surgery? I would definitely fight this. A thousand bucks is a lot of money!