Bae likes flowers so I signed up for one of those monthly delivery services. They surprise her every month with fresh flowers. You don’t know what’s coming until they arrive since they only send out flowers of the month. You don’t get to choose. We’ve had 2 deliveries so far and I loved seeing how happy she was to receive them.

They send us flowers like this – although these aren’t the flowers we actually got.

Were the flowers the large expense?

No. Well, I’ve got two cats. And it hadn’t occurred to us to send them a note about leaving certain kinds of flowers out of our bunch. So, we got some lilies in our February bunch. Lilies! You see lilies are deadly to cats. And we have two of them.

When I got home and saw the lilies on the kitchen counter, I panicked. You see, when we first started dating, I got bae some lilies. They’re my favourite flowers. She told me that they were toxic for cats and I put them on a really high window sill that I thought the cats couldn’t get to because I’d never seen them on it. Imagine my horror when I heard a crash and found the vase upturned on the bed. Luckily, the naughty cat hadn’t come in contact with the lilies and I promptly tossed them out.

So, when I saw the delivery, I asked if we could throw it out. I knew firsthand, how determined a cat could be to eat a new plant. Bae insisted on leaving it around and put it away in her office.

How did the cats get the lilies?

Bae left her office open for less than 5 minutes on Saturday morning. Unlike me, she thinks the cats to be clever enough to know what’s bad for them. We found the girl cat, let’s call her Luce, covered in lily pollen when we went to shoo them out of the office. Bae totally freaked out and started googling what might happen. We had some activated charcoal at home so we gave her a bit of that while we called up the vets. The regular vets were closing up so recommended an emergency vet clinic in Pimlico.

Since there’s no way to know if she ingested the toxins, we had to check her in for fluid therapy. She spent 36 hours on that and stayed at the clinic from Saturday till Monday morning. Her poor little brother was beside himself. He went looking for her under the bed, behind the couch and even escaped out of the flat no doubt hoping he’d find her out in the hallway.

How did this cost?

The vet called me on Monday morning to report that her blood results looked great, way better than if she’d started renal failure. He wanted to know whether – since she was sedated from the blood tests and therefore could have her IV and other medical paraphernalia removed – we’d be able to pick her up. Since the initial prognosis was a 48-hour stay, I wondered how much it would be to leave her for the full term. He said there’d be additional hospitalisation costs so I woke bae up and we set off to retrieve Luce. 

I’d tried to put the deposit on a credit card but I couldn’t remember my Mastercard PIN and they didn’t take Amex. So, I had to pay £945.66 as a cash expense. I’d hoped it would be nearer to £800. Still, I’m grateful that I got my money situation sorted enough that I could manage this expense.

Emergency funds need replenishing

I got up at 5 this morning to work my side-hustle because this wasn’t money from an emergency fund. It was money I was planning to use to pay off my last Amex bill so I’m going to need to top that back up as well as replenish my emergency fund. I mean, I’ll definitely quit procrastinating now and get the cats insured too.

What a way to start the weekend!

What about you? Have you had any unexpected expenses in 2020? Tell me about it in the comments.