Selling a story to help pay for vets bills?!

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soloequestrian

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Okay, so it's a cat, not a horse. He disappeared nearly two years ago and reappeared at the vets a week ago with a really bad urinary problem. Fingers crossed it is much better now, but it has taken three days in hospital and three additional visits (one on Xmas day) to resolve. I'm thrilled to have the cat back but now have a massive bill and obviously he wasn't insured because I didn't know if he was even still alive! It also feels quite unfair because it looks suspiciously like he has been fed inappropriately somewhere - he very overweight and he wasn't when he left, and I've never yet seen an obese stray cat - and that may well be what resulted in the blockage. He is a nervous type so I can't see him just visiting lots of people for food, unless he was able to do it sneakily during the night.

So I was wondering if anywhere might be interested in his story in return for a donation towards his vet costs - I thought about the microchipping people but as far as I can see the registers are charitable so don't really advertise? Anyone have any opinions or ideas?
 
I'm sure a lot of papers/local media will be interested in the story but you won't get paid for it!

My kittens hit the media last summer after an incident with a lily plant. We made it into the Daily Mail and local and regional papers and the radio. I did it in conjunction with the vets to raise awareness of lily poisoning. Didn't receive nor want any money for it though, I just wanted people to be aware. The treatment for my kittens cost me over £1000, I hadn't sorted their insurance because the week their free trail with petplan ended, my horse was put down and my head was all over the place.
 
No help I'm afraid but when I saw the title of the thread, I was imagining selling some sort of salacious 'kiss & tell' story to The Sun!
 
One of my cats is in vets she's been their a week the bill is over £750 so far I would not dream of suggesting anyone else helped me pay .
I suggest you pay for your own pet .
 
The cat was AWOL for nearly 2 years. That is the story - I think it's quite interesting. I'm not asking for help paying as such, I'm asking if any organisation might be interested enough in the story to pay for it. Some of your suggestions are really helpful and I will follow them up. If the cat had been with me for the two years a) there would be no story and b) he wouldn't have been in the mess he was.
 
LOL heard it all now! Im guessing somebody else is missing him now as well maybe they will contribute sort of joint custody arrangement maybe! Its no great story Cats are Cats they disappear and turn up again its not that unusual!
 
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I would be tempted to advertise him as a stray and see if his new owners collect him and pay the bill.

I had a neighbour who fed my daughters kitten so it hardly ever came home, she just wanted a black cat. She knew it was may daughters and it caused much upset, my daughter was about eleven so I ended getting another and she did the same thing.
Eventually the neighbour got given a cat after about two years, decided feeding three was too much and shut them out. Both cats reappeared and moved back home but I had got two more so we ended up with four cats. What tickles me is she knew they were ours, she would hear me calling them to feed them, they were neutered and if they were ever ill, I got to take them to the vet and pay.
 
soloequestrian said:
He disappeared nearly two years ago and reappeared at the vets a week ago with a really bad urinary problem. Fingers crossed it is much better now, but it has taken three days in hospital and three additional visits (one on Xmas day) to resolve. I'm thrilled to have the cat back but now have a massive bill and obviously he wasn't insured because I didn't know if he was even still alive!
So I was wondering if anywhere might be interested in his story in return for a donation towards his vet costs?
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Let me get this straight...........cat disappears and two years later walks into the vets on his own saying 'excuse me, I have a UTI?' Vets treat and don't consult you, having scanned moggy and seen that he is micro-chipped and belongs to you. Is this correct?

If so, then you MAY have a case for a discounted treatment rate, BUT......I suspect the history is not as I outlined above, or.....?

Alternatively, of course, you could sue those who have been feeding him inappropriately in the interim...............Jeepers creepers!
 
Someone recently had a sick animal on Facebook, they set up a go fund me page and then got the media involved, I don't think they got paid for their story but the go fund me page raised quite a bit with the publicity

I personally don't agree with this sort of thing but they weren't the first to do this and wont be the last
 
gunnergundog said:
Let me get this straight...........cat disappears and two years later walks into the vets on his own saying 'excuse me, I have a UTI?' Vets treat and don't consult you, having scanned moggy and seen that he is micro-chipped and belongs to you. Is this correct?

If so, then you MAY have a case for a discounted treatment rate, BUT......I suspect the history is not as I outlined above, or.....?

Alternatively, of course, you could sue those who have been feeding him inappropriately in the interim...............Jeepers creepers!
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The new 'owners ' will have been feeding him and looking after him until he became ill. Then suddenly he'll be a 'stray' and they'll have contacted rspca or cpl so they'll foot the bill.
See it all the time.
 
I work in PR, so a lot of my job is pitching in stories to the media. The first thing we do when generating ideas is to ask "what's the story/what would the headline be/why would people care?". A quick google search shows it's not unusual for cats to go wandering for many years before being reunited with their owners, but the only stories that have got traction with the mainstream media is when the cat has been gone 6+ years (some have returned 11 years later!), appeared hundreds of miles away from home or in one instance there was an issue whereby the microchip people wouldn't tell the original owner where the cat now was due to data protection.

So I'd question whether a cat that's been missing a couple of years is that interesting a hook.
 
I am fairly sure papers only pay for stories where there is such interest they approach you first or its making national news.

I work in a vets, cats go missing all the time and a UTI isnt an emotive enough subject for the papers. If you didnt want to/couldnt pay then maybe you should of signed him over to a rescue (although the fact the money could be used to help many others does throw some morality issues), looked for PDSA to fund him or PTS.

Be thankful he is back safe and that he could be helped. Many cant be saved and their owners would sell their belongings if it would save them. Also to blame it on 'someone that fed him' is again a little unfair, cats are great scavengers when hungry, dipping into others cats houses and scoffing what they can. Even if someone has been feeding him then atleast he is alive from being fed; your vets probably offers nurse weight clinics for next to nothing or free so take them up on this when he is back to full health.

I do apologise for the lack of sympathy but it does seem a marginally seflish question if you can afford the bill but it seems you dont want to really pay it.
 
FestiveFuzz said:
I work in PR, so a lot of my job is pitching in stories to the media. The first thing we do when generating ideas is to ask "what's the story/what would the headline be/why would people care?". A quick google search shows it's not unusual for cats to go wandering for many years before being reunited with their owners, but the only stories that have got traction with the mainstream media is when the cat has been gone 6+ years (some have returned 11 years later!), appeared hundreds of miles away from home or in one instance there was an issue whereby the microchip people wouldn't tell the original owner where the cat now was due to data protection.

So I'd question whether a cat that's been missing a couple of years is that interesting a hook.
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Thanks, that's also useful.
 
Gosh, I forgot how many people are lurking on here waiting to be outraged about something!
The bill is paid, he was handed in to the vets exactly as someone has described, but it was an old couple who the vet said were very confused (or appeared to be). The vet did ask permission to treat and of course I said yes, but none of us expected treatment to be quite so difficult and therefore expensive - I think now he was pretty close to death when the vet got him in - they took a pint of urine out of him by needle and his electrolytes were doing something crazy. I don't begrudge him the money, but if I could recoup some of somehow I can't really see the problem... and no, crowdfunding is not my thing.
 
Well I am sympathetic and think it was a good idea to ask if the story could raise money. Well anyway a good idea to consider if you could raise money by selling the story. I agree with the posters who said women's magazines. If you buy Take a Break and People's Friend, for example, you will see how you would need to angle your story for each mag differently. They might indeed look completely different!
 
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soloequestrian said:
I don't begrudge him the money, but if I could recoup some of somehow I can't really see the problem... and no, crowdfunding is not my thing.
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HI.....I'm an OAP; I have a horse and a number of dogs - one of them has required extensive surgery for bloat and he's not insured so if I could recoup some of the cost that would be grand! Please PM me for my bank details so you can do a bank transfer. Many thanks.

J

PS Crowd funding I am sure is not my thing either - although not entirely sure altogether what it is, being a poorly OAP. :(
 
Well you can but try I suppose. My horse was also featured in the Daily Mail, local press, Horse magazine and I wrote articles on her condition for a couple of the free mags you pick up at tack shops and I never received a penny for it. I did get some lovely professional photos though. I never set out to get any money for the publicity, despite my monthly drugs bill being not far off your total, I just wanted to show that an apparently hopeless condition could be managed and it also meant that as other people contacted me, I got lots of new case histories for my own private research project.
 
The story itself isn't interesting or emotive enough to be worth them writing for the papers, let alone paying you for the privilege. However, if you are really good with words and can get the tone right you may be able to produce something they would pay to publish. At that point you aren't so much selling the story as working as a writer though, and I assume if this was within your skill set and of sufficient interest to you to invest the time in you would already be doing it.
 
If you find out let me know, I have a vet bill that needs paying and could really do with someone else paying it for me.
 
My neighbour's cat went missing for a few months then came home so she kept him in a couple of months and then as soon as she let him out again he disappeared again. When he reappeared another couple of months later he was missing his bits and had a note on a new collar from his other family saying 'pls don't feed our cat or let him indoors'. She put her number on the note but never did find out who neutered him or hi other family are.

Cats seem very good at finding new homes when it suits them. I'm not sure it's much of a story, I nearly died twice, had my skin and mucus membranes slough off and lost my sight for several months from a side effect of prescription medication but it wasn't deemed an interesting enough story because I didn't have any gory photos of my body burning from the inside out. So much for warning others, the media can be very selective.
 
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