to be honest i just think that us inthe UK tend to be a bit more
caring towards our animals as a country, as a whole, (not talking
about individuals here ok??!!!) and so are more willing to help out
animals for no reason than the fact that we are all animal mad here ,
pretty much, few exceptions of course (remember that weird guy who was
shooting at animals and cats and birds, was not english, he was czech
or something).

if someone took a sick cat to the vet and the vet refused to do
anything then letters woudl be written, the vet would be 'outed' in
the press, people would moan about how outrageous it is that we are
letting down our pets, what happened to the dunkirk spirit, stiff
upper lips, simply not cricket, that it's not what a true englishman
gentleman does ie lets down his faithful friend in the hour of need,
etc etc, and any vet like that would be shamed into helping the animal
regardless of the cost to them and their business. I knwo a couple of
vets and they don;t run their practices to make money at all, they
just about cover costs and that's it and none go into it to make
money, in fact they kind of assume that they may lose some money and
they won't be making huge profits out of it.

if you take an injured stray cat to the vets in this country you
EXPECT the vet to help the cat without question, money issues can wait
(anyway we dontl talk about money over here, simply not done , very
rude in fact), there is a life at stake, and anyone who refused to
help purely on the grounds of lack of payment for their services woudl
be very much in the minority and looked down upon.

what am i trying to say here? basically peolpe in this country are not
out ot make money, certainly anyone connected with helping animals,
vets vet nurses, people who help out animal charities dont; do it for
the moeny and accept that alot of their own money will go towards
helping animals. We just don;t have the 'money-grabbing' culture that
you seem to have in the US, remember that inthis country you can be of
a certain class (middle class, upper class, whichever) with relatively
little money at your disposal, it all about lineage and education and
how you were brought up etc etc, not always to do with cold hard cash
and the acquiring of it.

Class inthis country is also to do with behaviour, and one of the
types of behaviour which is encouraged is being charitable and helping
those less fortunate than oruselves, ie animals, regardless of the
personal cost to ourselves. Which is why vets here don't demand to see
a credit card before they look at your pet, that kind of thing would
be unthinkable and any vet doing that would quickly go out of
business, very vulgar way to go on indeed.

anyway think about the differences in attitudes between us; you have
your cats declawed and have pristine furniture, we have lots of
scratch marks all over our ancient tables and chairs and deal with it
(and have happy cats as a result), says somethign about the different
ways in which we look at our animasl for me

bookie