I am of the opinion that trying to use human focused medical procedures on animals is just wrong. I think this because animals do not understand what is happening to them. All they know is you’re poking, prodding, doing surgery, amputating limbs, WHATEVER to them and IT HURTS.
A famous very old serval’s parents had her leg amputated a few months ago because there was cancer found in the bone. Bone cancer is RARELY in ONE BONE. But they did that to this 20 yr old elderly serval. And guess what? YEP the cancer is in other bones. SO all that pain and recovery the poor old cat went through is for naught. As I knew it would be. This hurts my heart.
People also do feeding tubes on cats with fatty liver disease. THAT never works, either. It is just torturous for the poor cat.
Doing preventative things like meds for kidneys or diabetes, or getting fluids is fine, that is not a big deal for the animal, but things that are invasive and/or long term painful and NOT GUARANTEED TO WORK are just not in their best interests.
Animals do not understand WHY you are sewing tubes to their nose, or amputating a limb or stabbing them for dialysis. All they know is that IT HURTS. Also, being away from their humans is stressful, in addition to whatever procedure is being done.
They don’t understand and I’m convinced that this is why these things rarely work. They are NOT humans.
If your pet has cancer, or fatty liver, or end stage kidney disease, or whatever, it’s our job as caregivers to give them THE BEST QUALITY OF LIFE POSSIBLE. PERIOD. Keep them comfortable, happy and spoil them rotten. Putting them through procedures that won’t ultimately make much difference is cruel.
I always have and always will believe this. People do this to pets because THEY are not ready to let them go. If your pet is very ill, you need to be objective about how THEY feel, not how YOU feel. We have an obligation to let them go when they are no longer happy and well. It’s too bad we don’t do this for humans, TBH.