Best pet insurance - Cats

Xein

Xein

Xein

Associate
Joined
15 Oct 2010
Posts
1,461
Hello,

I've browsed through different insurance websites and quotes and had a search for a few threads on here and the majority are voting for PetPlan.

PetPlan's policies look good but they seem a tad expensive to me? But I guess you get what you pay for which is good as you don't want to be caught out.

Having said that we've just been caught out by not having pet insurance with our cat falling ill and having urinary tract problems, so we thought it would be a good time to get him insured just in case anything else occurs.

A lot of different websites offer variations on prices and plans, the best I've seen is PetPlan and will probably go with them, but I just wanted to see what other peoples views / thoughts were on what insurers they've gone with.

Thanks :)
 
I'm with direct line, I pay £12.50 a month in total for 2 cats. Am aware that's quite cheap, but my cats are young at the moment.

Grateful for it, as one of them was ill in January, and the bill came to over 700!

Most people will say use pet plan, because they are well renowned for sorting out claims quickly and without squabbles. When it comes to renewal, I will definitely be shopping around for quotes again.

You may struggle to get urinary issues on any insurance policy because they may say its a pre existing condition - just to warn you

:)
 
knip said:
I'm with direct line, I pay £12.50 a month in total for 2 cats. Am aware that's quite cheap, but my cats are young at the moment.

Grateful for it, as one of them was ill in January, and the bill came to over 700!

Most people will say use pet plan, because they are well renowned for sorting out claims quickly and without squabbles. When it comes to renewal, I will definitely be shopping around for quotes again.

You may struggle to get urinary issues on any insurance policy because they may say its a pre existing condition - just to warn you

:)
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Thank you for your response,

That's one thing that I'm concerned about, as I've heard it can occur again and hence one of the reasons for taking out insurance, but I suppose it doesn't hurt in asking when taking out the insurance policy, I think I'll give PetPlan a ring in the morning to see what the situation is and whether they will cover for pre existing conditions.

Thanks again for your response
 
Frozo said:
Thank you for your response,

That's one thing that I'm concerned about, as I've heard it can occur again and hence one of the reasons for taking out insurance, but I suppose it doesn't hurt in asking when taking out the insurance policy, I think I'll give PetPlan a ring in the morning to see what the situation is and whether they will cover for pre existing conditions.

Thanks again for your response
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They may either include it, and charge you more, or make it be exempt. Just ring and ask (get 2 prices maybe so you can see the difference, and work out if its worth paying the extra, or putting some money away every month in case it reoccurs)

It's worth being honest, because if kitty should be ill again, they wouldn't cover it if they found out it had happened before and they weren't told :)
 
knip said:
They may either include it, and charge you more, or make it be exempt. Just ring and ask (get 2 prices maybe so you can see the difference, and work out if its worth paying the extra, or putting some money away every month in case it reoccurs)

It's worth being honest, because if kitty should be ill again, they wouldn't cover it if they found out it had happened before and they weren't told :)
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Yeah, I'll definitely give them a ring and see what they say, as like you said I don't want to take out a policy without letting them know and it reoccurs and them not paying out.
 
A quick update, they said they will not cover any pre-existing conditions. And judging by this, this will be the answer from all other insurers. Total shame really, just fingers crossed it doesn't happen again. Lesson learnt I suppose.
 
We got caught out for the first time recently with one of our cats becoming ill. She got dehydrated, and refused to eat or drink. After £500 pounds of car antiobiotics shes better, but we got cat insurance pretty quick after.

Of course after that one of our other cats needed a couple of teeth out, and this is were we discover that most insurers dont cover dental work. Because after a certain age cats are renowned for dental problems.
 
Allattar said:
We got caught out for the first time recently with one of our cats becoming ill. She got dehydrated, and refused to eat or drink. After £500 pounds of car antiobiotics shes better, but we got cat insurance pretty quick after.

Of course after that one of our other cats needed a couple of teeth out, and this is were we discover that most insurers dont cover dental work. Because after a certain age cats are renowned for dental problems.
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It's a shame and annoying at the same time.

We've had many pets over the years and never once had pet insurance and they were all fine, and we didn't think any different when getting a new addition to the family. But low and behold we were caught out, never going to make the same mistake twice if we have anymore pets.
 
Frozo, you may find your cat is susceptible to urinary tract problems, mine certainly is (I struggle to keep his weight under control which doesn't help). As long as you notice it quickly in the future it shouldn't be too much of a big problem, with mine a few days on Metacam (anti-inflammatory) from the vets usually sorts it out. My vet is of the view that as long as it doesn't happen more than two to three times a year it's not too much of a big deal. Anything more that that would probably need further investigation as their is a risk of crystals forming in the bladder.

I've seen an improvement with my cat by switching to a more varied diet for him (due to his weight issues he was on prescription diet dry food for a couple of years) I'm now giving him primarily the wet variant of prescription diet and this seems to have produced an improvement.

Dehydration can be a factor with urinary tract problems and cats aren't always very good at drinking enough water as they tend to take a lot of their liquid from their food, so it's worth looking into that.

Anyway, you may have know all of that anyway but just though I'd share!

Edit - on the insurance question I use morethan, they're relatively cheap and have a reasonable name online but you will still have the pre-existing condition problem...
 
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That's what I fear will happen again in the future, the vets said we caught it early this time but the vet bill still racked up a hefty price.

After what the vet told us, we're no longer giving him biscuits he's currently on prescribed wet food and will continue to be on wet food.

As you stated cats don't tend to drink much water, which in our case he didn't, and I think that's where the problems started because he used to eat quite a lot of dried biscuits even though he had fresh wet food a few times a day.

Diet control is what we're focusing on now as well, he's not overweight by any means but the vet suggested keeping an eye on his food intake which we're now doing.

Since his treatment he's looking and feeling a lot better, he's more active and generally happier, and this is where we want to keep him.

I'm just hoping if it does happen again in the future we'll notice the problem early enough again, but fingers crossed if we keep him on a wet food diet and diet control it shouldn't re-occur or if it does not very often.

Are you cats indoor or outdoor cats?
 
Important thing with pet insurance is make sure its a "for life" option.
Some of the cheaper insurances may very well pay out for conition xyz but then come the renewal would refused to pay out again as technically it was a "pre existing condition".

For a preventative measure cystease is a decent option, My vets charged iirc ~£140 for a tub, but you can get them online far cheaper, medicanimal I think was the cheapest place I found.

I'm with Petplan for life for 2 cats on their mid grade classic plan and Pay approx £22 a month. More than happy with it as JD's last visit was pretty hefty (Urinary issues also) and involved him being in the animal hospital for a few days. So glad I had insurance
 
I can recommend Purely Pets. I recently had to use the insurance for one of our cats; what seemed like a sinus infection involved a couple of weeks in hospital, MRIs, and a few procedures. Unfortunately it turned out to be cancer and we had to put her to sleep. Apparently unusually they even cover the euthansia and were very quick to pay and easy to deal with. Total cost was just over £5000 so very glad we had insurance.
 
Getting kittens tomorrow, I got talked into it :rolleyes: anyway does petplan pay the vet direct ? As I doubt I'd have a few £k stashed about to wait however long for it to be reimbursed
 
MrMoonX said:
Getting kittens tomorrow, I got talked into it :rolleyes: anyway does petplan pay the vet direct ? As I doubt I'd have a few £k stashed about to wait however long for it to be reimbursed
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If its like my direct line insurance, you'll have an excess (mine is £70) you pay that to the vets, and then the vets claim the rest directly from the insurance company.
 
Make sure whoever you go with offer "treatment for life". Many will pay-up of diagnosis and pay for medication for a year and then stop at renewal time.
If your cat needs medication for the rest of her life make sure the policy covers it for that.
 
We're with Argos Pet Insurance who have actually been pretty good - about £9 per month for male cat, £7.50 for female (apparenly males stray more, get into more fights and generally cost more than females) but unfortunately we took out the 'one step down from the best' cover, which doesn't cover us for life on illnesses/conditions.

Our Poppy has terrible skin problems which we had diagnostic test after diagnostic test done for - it now turns out she has an auto-immune problem which requires pretty expensive immuno-suppressant drugs (we could have her on cheaper steroids but are worried about the long-term effects) as well as a hypoallergenic diet for her food allergy which she also has. She needs to make pretty frequent trips to the vet as she sometimes picks up infections from scratching her skin and doesn't fight them off well as she is immune suppressed, sigh.

We were covered for the first 12 months, but no longer. It's a pain, an expensive pain. Like you say - lesson learnt - hopefully your cat won't have a recurrence of his urinary problem.

We have a water fountain for our cats and they drink quite a lot, are quite happy to drink from it as the water constantly circulates:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Catit-Desig...eywords=catit+fresh+&+clear+drinking+fountain might convince your cat to drink more, keeping him even healthier?

I would also recommend AnimedDirect for any meds you may need - they've always been great for Poppy's meds.
 
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