Woman Spends $19,000 on Kidney Transplant—For One of Her Pets

Woman Spends $19,000 on Kidney Transplant—For One of Her Pets
Zachary Stieber
3/15/2018
Updated:
3/15/2018

A Maryland woman spent thousands of dollars on a kidney transplant for one of her cats.

The $19,000 equals 41 percent of Betsy Boyd’s annual salary, reported The Baltimore Sun.

Boyd said the money she spent on Stanley, her 17-year-old cat, was well-spent, even if he dies soon.

“Anything could happen. If Stan did pass away sooner rather than later, I’d know I had done what I could for him,“ she said. ”We’ve already had a few really good weeks. He’s really happy, and that alone is worth the price.”

According to Vet West, indoor cats generally live from 12 to 18 years of age.

However, the group notes that many indoor cats may live to be in the early 20s.

Boyd owns five other cats, including a 2-year-old named Jay who she adopted for a kidney for Stanley.

Boyd, 44, is a part-time member of the University of Baltimore’s creative writing faculty and earns about $46,000 a year.

Her page on the website says she’s a lecturer at the Klein Family School of Communications Design.

“Both as a teacher and as a novelist, I am interested in writing because writing, when we do it regularly, enables us to release the chaotic and complex information buzzing about our brains (and our bodies) and occasionally to decode and transform such difficult data into highly imaginative concrete work,” it states. Her fiction work has been published in Eclectica, Loch Raven Review,  Huffington Post, and other places.

(University of Baltimore)
(University of Baltimore)

Her husband, a freelance journalist, earns around $49,000 a year.

“I’m smart with money,” Boyd, 44, said. “I’m very frugal. I drive a used car and wear clothing from consignment stores, and I have no debt at all. The message I’d like to get across is that if you save your money carefully, you can spend $19,000 on something that moves you.”

She also said that out of her cats, Stanley “is the only one who acts like a human being trapped in a cat’s body.”

She added, “He’s so vocal and communicative. He maintains eye contact better than any cat I’ve ever known. When I’m at work, he waits at the window or front door for me to come home, just like a dog.”

From NTD.tv
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