So many crazy cat lady problems, so little money!

I just don't have enough money for these kinds of vet bills.

I went outside this morning and sat on the porch swing, waiting for my mom to get finished getting ready so I could go to the park. While I was waiting, my little tan kitten came up on the porch and just looked at me. It's always had the tendency to get "bad eyes". But they started clearing up on their own every couple of days (and it isn't all that tame so it was a pain to catch it without it screaming bloody murder) so I stopped taking the time to clean them. Probably a bad idea. So now I feel extremely guilty. I guess this time its eye didn't clear up properly and a lot of fluid built up behind it or something. Now that its eye has finally opened, I noticed this awful bulge. I picked up the kitten and its eye is, like, out of its eye socket. It's awful.

I'm almost positive that it's lost sight in that eye now. Dad took a picture of it and is going to the vet tomorrow (we have to do vet appointments that way because we don't have a pet carrier)... to see if (maybe, HOPEFULLY) the solution will be as simple as eye drops or an antibiotic. It seems more likely that the problem will have to be surgically corrected. Maybe the eye can be saved, maybe it will have to be removed. Either way, I don't think it is life-threatening unless we wait too long and it becomes infected. I don't know how much this procedure will cost, but even if it isn't that much, I have absolutely no idea how I am going to pay for it.

It takes way too much begging and convincing to even get my parents to go to the vet, there's virtually no way I could get them to pay for surgery. They have this thing... this REALLY annoying thing... where, if I ask them to take a sick cat/kitten to the vet, they say "The vet couldn't do anything for it".

=|

Really? The VETERINARIAN couldn't do anything for the ANIMAL?
Sigh. Bless my parents and their backwoods way of doing things.
We went through this when Sweetpea was sick. I'm still convinced the vet could have done something for her. This kitten isn't sick, it acts as it normally does, but that can't be the most comfortable thing in the world. It's at least still behind its eyelids so it can perhaps sleep.
My dad did see once he got home from work that it is way worse than he thought it was going to be, so I've got that going for me.
This is an awful position to be in!