In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Conclusion Animals as Property and Patients F rom my first few days in the world of veterinary medicine until my very last day, the ambiguous social status of companion animals was visually clear to me. On any given day, in one room of an animal hospital sits a healthy two-year-old cat scheduled to be put to sleep because his owners can’t afford the relatively simple procedure required to unblock his urethra and return him to good health. Across the hall sits a fourteen-year-old, blind, paralyzed dog getting thousands of dollars of surgical care and around-the-clock life-sustaining treatment in hopes of buying his owners another few months with their animal. When I made note of this situation during an interview, one of my favorite veterinarians said to me: It is Murphy’s Law of veterinary medicine that the owner who is willing to do everything has the pet who is not fixable, and the owner who is not willing to do shit has the pet who is an easy fix. It is so frustrating ! you may want to treat your pet, but your pet isn’t fixable. But over here I have a two-year-old cat who can’t pee. Give me a couple of days and a few hundred bucks, and we can have you a great cat, but instead both of them end up dead! It is so frustrating. Over and over again, I am reminded of this unfortunate conundrum as veterinarians complain about the ambiguous status of the animals in their care: “you’ve got one person that’s just throwing money at you for a problem that Conclusion 171 you can’t fix and then other people that can’t or won’t pay for problems that you can fix.” during my last few weeks in the hospital I was shadowing a new cohort of interns and had begun to think of myself a pretty good amateur veterinarian because I “cured” a feline patient of cancer. A woman brought her cat to the hospital for euthanasia because of steadily growing stomach masses. The owner said she could not afford the diagnostic or treatment options the intern discussed with her and, after signing the necessary paperwork, left the examination room. As I had done many times before, I carried the cat to the back to help prepare her for euthanasia when I noticed that the four-year-old animal did not, in fact, have multiple tumors. The “tumors” were balls of matted hair. When the intern examined them, she knew instantly that I was right and ran off excitedly after the owner. Finding the cat’s owners getting into their car, the veterinarian said, “I have great news! It is just matted hair and not cancer, so you can take your cat home.” The woman responded casually, “Oh, no. We were prepared to just let her go and not have a cat for now. Just go ahead and euthanize her.” Excitement drained from the young veterinarian, and she told the owner she was not comfortable with that request. She asked the owner to come in and instead sign paperwork surrendering her cat to the care of the hospital. Although the owner agreed to allow the intern to try to find her cat a new home, the veterinarian was left frustrated and angered by the situation: For somebody not to know that that was a hair mat I guess is okay. . . . To me, that just means that they don’t really touch their cat. That is fine, but when they found out that it was just a hair mat, their reaction to that was really shocking to me. you saw; she just waved it off to me and was like, “Just kill it.” I thought, “do you even know what you are asking me to do? I am going to kill your cat over a hair mat? I don’t think so!” Throughout my time in veterinary hospitals, I had seen similar situations and knew that this young, idealistic veterinarian was going to get used to pet owners who do not seem to share the moral value she places on animals. In fact, decisions around end-of-life care and euthanasia are among the biggest ethical concerns for interns, residents, and experienced veterinarians alike as they are memorable, complex, and contain deep and unresolved tensions inherent in human-animal relationships. veterinarians sort out and work through life-and-death conflicts...

Share