downlandvets.co.uk

JUST PRAYING MY KITTENS SURVIVE

I’d give no stars if it was an option …. I took my cat in to be neutered at the Hailsham branch on 29th March 2023 , we had to wait a while to pick him up as he was very drowsy . We brought him home in the afternoon and he was very out of it , had no idea what he was doing, 2 days later he started vomiting and had diarrhoea, I was told to expect this as it would be the anaesthetic, well 3 days later he was still having diarrhoea and there was a lot of blood in it , I then noticed my female cat who is nursing 6 two week old kittens starting to have diarrhoea, she was exactly the same as my male cat , she also started vomiting and was very lathargic and struggling to feed the kittens , who were losing weight. Clearly my cat must have picked up a bug at the vet as he is an indoor cat and has no contact with any other animals, i rang the vets at 12pm on 5th April , and was told a vet would call me back, by 4 pm I’d still heard nothing so I called back and said I needed to speak to the vet and she said ok I’ll go and speak to her now , so clearly either she hadn’t passed on the message or the vet didn’t think that a cat pooping blood, 6 kittens losing weight and a lathargic vomiting nursing cat was serious, i said that clearly River had picked up a bug at the vet and as a result I now have 2 sick cats and 6 kittens who were starting to really struggle , they said I could bring them all down but would have to pay a consultation fee of £60 for each of the cats and £60 for the kittens , there was no way I could afford that and explained that my cat went to the vet healthy and come back seriously unwell , I said I wasn’t prepared to pay a fee for something that happened at the vet , the receptionist said that we had to pay there was no other option, she admitted he had probably picked up a bug whilst at the vet , I told her I’d be bringing my kittens down but wouldn’t be paying and asked her to make an appointment, I said I would call her back to get the appointment as by this point I was in a state as I had 8 sick cats , 5 mins later we receive a call from the practice manager who says that we had made her receptionist cry as we were aggressive which was nonsense, we explained to her the situation and her exact words were “go on then prove it, prove he got sick here” we said so that’s how you get away with it then and said we were taking it further and reporting them to the RCVS , she then said she was terminating the call and removing the cats from their books . We said that clearly either he had come into contact with a sick animal or something wasn’t clean as there’s no way he could have got it anywhere else and again she repeated “prove it then” not once did she ask how the kittens were doing or offer any advice whatsoever, there was no concern for them , the only thing she was interested in was the money , we are now reporting them as we now have 6 sick kittens and 2 sick cats and there’s no space at any other vets near us , im absolutely disgusted, I am just praying the kittens survive , I will take this as far as I have to , because I don’t want anyone else going through what we are right now ! I would never trust them with my cats again as their duty of care is extremely low

Date of experience: Apr 05, 2023