What's the most extravagant thing you've bought for your pet, and do you regret it?
Inspired by watching my cat lay on her 6' (2 m) tall cat tower and sleep like a baby. Zero regrets, even if it makes us look like insane cat people for having a giant cat tower right in our living room. She lives here, she gets furniture too!
Medical care. Worth it.
Came here to say:
Probably cost $25k over the years. I'm extremely grateful our pet insurance covered 80-90% of that.
Dude just turned 10 and he's healthy and happy enough to start treating his arthritis.
Bought an automatic door opener (the type for handicapped people in wheelchairs) so the dogs can come and go as they please to/from the back yard. I setup infrared sensors inside and outside near the dogs level (off to the side outside) and they quickly figured out how to open the door on their own.
Was like $600 but man was it worth it! Never have to worry about them being locked in or pestering me to go out. My big dog also gets a huge kick out of sneaking up on the pool guy and barking at him (just once!) when he's not looking 🤣
6' cat wheel. Did not run on it once. Drove it two hours to a friend's house.
$250
My friends' cats use theirs. I think they started getting them to by luring them with treats.
Our cats use it to beg for treats. Very rarely do I see them on it and not meowing for attention.
An AirTag for my wife's cat, along with a collar holder. She's an indoor cat but REALLY wants to get out. We got it after reports of coyotes roaming around and attacking small pets.
One time she darted out a sliding door window, we tried to track her down. Went all over the house, then outside. Ended up driving all over the neighborhood. Nothing. Turned out the whole time she was hiding under a car, 20ft from where she got out.
Confidence in the tech is low.
Airtags don’t work that well for tracking cats since it needs other iPhones nearby to send the location.
We were waving iPhones feet away from the tag. It didn't get picked up so we wandered out to the neighborhood.
My guess is, to preserve battery, iPhones wake up and scan for nearby AirTags only X seconds at a time (don't have actual numbers, but guessing somewhere between 30-120 seconds). Whatever AirTag ID they pick up, they send anonymously to the cloud along with location. If the owner has the tag in lost mode and the ID matches, they get notified.
This means if you're walking around with your phone and it hasn't hit the scan window, you could miss the tag. This works in a high-density area like a city center with lots of phones waking up and scanning at different times, but not so much in low density places.
In that case, a GPS tag with cell modem might work better, but it's a lot pricier and requires regular charging.
Our bird isn’t with us anymore, but years ago I bought her a special made backpack with mesh windows and some wooden perches inside it so I could take her outside. It was excellent.
For the first 80% of your comment, I was definitely picturing a small backpack on the bird, and I was wondering what the purpose of tiny perches would be.
Apparently the squishmallows I got her are an obscene show of wealth, according to my family and her doggy daycare. I got them for like $10 each from Costco. She is a texture gal and always squishes and kneads her toys so I knew she'd love squishmallows. She sleeps with her head pushed onto one every night.
That sounds absolutely adorable!
Expensive in time and labor, moderately expensive in costs. I built a set of floating shelves that went up around a corner, to a ledge at the top of a big window, and off another way for a cat-only path to the second floor. And it was designed to fit the design of the rest of the room.
It was a lot for a rental I only lived in for two years, but worth it for how much my cat enjoyed it.
LitterRobot 3 -- Died after a year.. I am not spending money on repairing it as I think the design is fundamentally flawed (DFI system gets pee and litter in it by design and fails). LitterRobot 4 fixes SOME of the issues but I am not dropping that much money on another robot litter box..
I loved not having to scoop so regularly and the immediate clean cycle actually made the litter last longer with just a few top ups.
I have purchased two cat fountains, both died in like 6mo of use even with filters and careful cleaning. Cats loved them and they were purchased because they were not drinking enough.. Found out all I needed was a CHEAP larger diameter bowl as their whiskers were touching the edges and that is why they didn't drink much from other bowls.
I believe they’ve fixed the DFI issue, the new one I got maybe a year ago is a different design, with less components and they appear to be sealed. Hasn’t failed yet, fwiw.
If it makes you feel any better about it, I've had the LR4 for almost 2 years without issues. Easily the best quality of life improvement for both my cats and me. Even unpowered (extended power outage), I found it more convenient because I could scoop and put it directly into the waste drawer.
It felt ridiculous when I bought it, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat if needed because of the benefits.
Probably just their grooming every 2-3 months, which has gotten VERY expensive as inflation has made groomers' lives hell and they've had to pass on those costs.
But, 100% worth it. My pups seem to know how good they look and love strutting around and getting attention from passersby on our walks.
Bilateral TPLO surgery on my cat's back legs. It put my wife and I in debt.
And 2 litter robots.
Bilateral TPLO surgery
I see that you love your kitty (2 LRs, maybe multiple kitties?) the proper amount and I nod to you in quiet solidarity.
2 on the same cat. The vet said she only needed one right now but that the other leg was going to need it in a year or two, and it would be cheaper to do them both at the same time. The post surgery aftercare was rough. We had to keep her locked in a dog cage with a litter box and a small bed for 10 weeks to heal. At the follow-up, the vet said her legs were looking better than she could have hoped for because we actually stuck to the aftercare. Now, the little turd has to be on medication, or her gi flares up, and she throws up several times a day every day.
Behold the rotisserie chicken herself
I bought my cat an auto feeder and a filtered water fountain. Definitely quite pricey, but it's amazing not getting woken up by meows to feed her each morning. Plus, it keeps her on a consistent schedule and seems like she drinks much more water with the filtered fountain too.
what fountain did you get? the one I got, the filter doesn't fit snugly so the water just goes around it
I went with Petlibro for the feeder and fountain, they've worked well for me.
Our older dachshund has really severe separation anxiety when my mom is out of the house.
We got him a puppy. Who has separation anxiety from me.
This dog bed: https://bigbarker.com/
Got it with the waterproof protector and an extra cover so I can wash one at a time easily. Totally worth it, I could sleep on this thing its so comfy.
and I second the auto feeder thing. completely changed my relationship with my first cat
Is there such a thing as autofeeders for wet food?
yes, they just have a smaller capacity.
4 week board and train program. It cost $4500.
Our standard poodle is a rescue that was heavily abused by her previous owner. She would get scared and bite. I figured the training would be cheaper than a lawsuit. It's made a HUGE difference in her behavior.
This is a little weird, but I wanted to take my cat on a trip to the beach. For some reason I thought she would enjoy seeing the ocean. Maybe in our next life...
Litter Robot. But, if I'm being honest, I bought it for myself.
I got it on the recommendation of a family member. 9 outta 10 would recommend. It gets stuck once in a great while and doesn't sort the litter / feces, requiring mild intervention. Game changer because one of our kitties stopped burying (I think because she's a Maine Coon and was bad at it due to size constraints in the old litter box, despite having the largest available).
The surgery that gutted her like a fishie from stem to stern and then the two weeks of delicate care for her. She decided to grow things inside herself (not cancerous, luckily) but still, you know. Bad.
It was insanely expensive. My mother paid as we couldn't.
Mother herself has a medically delicate cat, who is actually staying over currently so I can take care of her medical needs while the cat yells at me about how I'm not perfect. But I'm okay at taking care of her. So I get the honor of doing whatever the cat wants, immediately.
I buy my Guinea pig fresh veggies every week and buy myself frozen veggies. unfortunately for me my pigs love the expensive ones like cucumber and don't like cheap veggies like carrot or broccoli.
I bought my cat a massive cat tree also and have zero regrets, she loves it.
Water fountain
She absolutely preferred it over a standard bowl
lol, mine did not. They dropped toys in it to make it overflow & discolor the floors.
It now sits in the closet, guess they prefer still water.
$500 bucks plush toy.
What toy was it? I'm not even sure where to start looking for a $500 plush toy.
It was handmade by a native tribu, didn't exist anymore.
Other than surgery? My wife got a cat tree. He loves it.
I have a bonus, the cheapest thing our cat loves is paper bags that we get free from our one grocery store.
A puppy, and no, even though she did die of cancer right after she turned two. She was my joy.
Her ashes.
Why did you buy your pet some ashes?
Lol, not ashes for her, of her. She was cremated when she passed and getting her ashes specifically was pricey.
I don't know that I've gotten them anything that I would describe as extravagent. Expensive? Definitely.
I spend about 30% of my income on their monthly supplies (mainly food and medications). Probably not the smartest decision financially but I have zero regrets. I love my babies and would spend the whole world's wealth on them. Which is probably why I am not wealthy 🫣🤑🥸
A gps tracker for my dog. Take her on long walks by the river at night mostly off leash. Keep her in sight of course but knowing I can chase her how if she gets too far is comforting
Which one specifically?
I got the litter robot. I've had it 9 months. I have a cat that loves to dig and the rubber liner doesn't look like it's going to hold up for more than 2 years because she scratches the same spot relentlessly, but I still love it. I'd buy a new one every other year if I needed to.