Cat is Expensive

So, I have now learned the hard way that free cats rarely are. Within 24 hours of bringing our new kitty (who we have named Tikka — as in Masala) home, she was vomiting blood. There followed a very expensive visit to the vet, and a period of having to drag her out from under furniture in order to give her medicine. It got a lot easier once she started eating again, because her pill could just be buried in her food, and she was very good about finishing all we gave her.
She was extremely skinny when we first got her, and the vet weighed her at about 2.4 kg, so we’ve been very careful not to give her too much food at a time. Given her history, I don’t trust her ability to pace herself. Speaking of her history, when we got back from the vet, I tried contacting the person I got her from again, just to ask some more specific questions about her history, questions that admittedly I probably should have asked in the first place, but she is now ignoring my emails, which tells me pretty clearly that she knew this was a sick cat she was giving away.
Anyway, my new, better-paying job has not started yet, and I’m sitting at the bottom of a rather deep financial hole. We had to take her back to the vet again last week, and I actually had to apply for financial assistance. On the bright side, the nice lady at the vet’s office was willing to hold off on submitting the claim to the finance company, so that we can include vaccinations and spaying on the same loan, rather than running the risk of being refused if we re-apply at a later date.
