{"id":2026,"date":"2010-06-10T10:46:26","date_gmt":"2010-06-10T15:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/?p=2026"},"modified":"2010-06-10T10:49:48","modified_gmt":"2010-06-10T15:49:48","slug":"first-world-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/first-world-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"First World Problems"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I called the vet and the estimate for Tabitha&#8217;s surgery is more than I hoped it would be, but less than I was scared that it would be. At least that includes the biopsy. This seems like an awful lot of money to spend on a cat, but this is <em>my<\/em> cat we&#8217;re talking about. After seven years, she&#8217;s practically part of the family. And, while she&#8217;s not exactly a kitten, she could very well have another 10 years in her. I&#8217;d think that this was a completely ridiculous expense if it was someone else, but it&#8217;s probably human nature to not really hold ourselves to the same standards that we hold other people. Especially when it comes to the creatures that share a bed with us.<\/p>\n<p>We could save a little money if we didn&#8217;t have the growth biopsied, but then I&#8217;d have the joy of trying to figure out, on my own, if my cat was slowly dying of cancer. No thank you.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t help but think that this is a complete and utter First World problem. A lot of people in other countries don&#8217;t have the luxury of even <em>considering<\/em> surgery for their pets. Hell, a lot of people don&#8217;t have the luxury of owning pets in the first place. I love Tabitha dearly, but I know places in the world where she&#8217;d either be competition or she&#8217;d be food. A sense of perspective doesn&#8217;t exactly make any of this easier, but I suppose that it&#8217;s good to remember to count your blessings every now and then.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re going to pay for the surgery because we have some money socked away. It&#8217;s not going to break the bank, but I&#8217;d be lying if I said it wasn&#8217;t going to sting a little. The way I see it is this. I&#8217;d spend the money (more of it, actually) on a vacation. Why wouldn&#8217;t I spend it on someone who greets me when I come home every day and who always finds a way to make me smile?<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s all cross our fingers that this will be the end of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I called the vet and the estimate for Tabitha&#8217;s surgery is more than I hoped it would be, but less than I was scared that it would be. At least&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cats","category-grumble","category-random"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yggS-wG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2026"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2028,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026\/revisions\/2028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}