I’m an immigrant to the United States, originally from the tiny Scandinavian kingdom of Denmark. I moved here as an adult, not to better my financial situation, but to marry my American girlfriend and improve my emotional life. It was hard to leave a secure job with good pay; it was a risk of the unknown, but I thought well worth the love of a good woman. After settling in, I managed to find a job in the same field, with an almost identical income. Financially my life should be the same, except it quickly became apparent that I have more disposable income here. A lot more.

It can be difficult to understand the impact that such an increase in disposable income can have on a person’s life, without a tangible example. Americans shrug it off because they take it for granted. They can’t understand what it’s like living paycheck to paycheck or saving up for something trivial on an otherwise decent income. My Danish friends and family can’t understand the difference either. They think what I’m about to tell you shows how irresponsible or foolish I am with money, because spending money in this way is simply not possible without upsetting your financial life for months or years.

Literal disposable income

You get the idea: disposable income is nice, it allows you to be more carefree and buy nice things. But it’s also about more than being able to afford luxuries, and it can mean the difference between life and death for those you love. The main take away from the events you’ll read about here is this: had they played out in my native Denmark, I wouldn’t have been able to afford the medical care that saved my friend’s life. I probably wouldn’t even have been able to find anyone to provide the care because there is no market for something people cannot afford. He would have been killed humanely at my expense instead.

My friend’s name is “BJ.” Scratch that, BJ is more than a friend, he’s family. He also happens to be a cat. We didn’t really plan on getting another pet, but he was irresistibly cute – a real scrapper. He was a skinny little thing and had a lot of scars and scabs, but he was exceptionally outgoing and had very high spirits. His personality is likely why he evaded being killed at least twice while passing through high kill shelters in the first 6 months of his young life. He miraculously found himself in a no-kill shelter near us, and we found him in a pet store that features locally adoptable cats.

BJ had a clean bill of health from the shelter, and we decided to give him a chance. Having lost another cat recently, we decided to protect ourselves from heart-ache by offering to foster him, with the option of later adopting him. Yeah right. We decided to keep him within a couple of weeks. He quickly gained a bit of weight, his scabs healed, and his fur filled in. He got along with our 3 other rescue cats and was living a good life in his new home. He worked his way into our hearts, became part of the family, and we became inseparable.

Cats are prone to upper respiratory infections; they result from a herpes-like virus that is in virtually all cats. Like cold sores in humans, it lays dormant most of the time, but when it flares up the symptoms are a runny nose, sneezing, and maybe a fever. All our cats would suffer from this occasionally, but BJ caught it really bad after having lived in our home for a couple of years. His symptoms were much worse and he didn’t really seem to spring back from it as easily as our other cats. One day last year after a bout of this, he started to drool a lot and bleed out of his mouth. We panicked and took him to a vet immediately

It turned out he had several bad teeth, and one had to be removed. He was also presenting with enough other strange symptoms that the vet decided to do a few routine tests. BJ tested positive for FIV, the feline equivalent of HIV, and on top of that he was severely anemic. Because of the anemia it was uncertain if he also had the FeLV virus, which causes leukemia in cats. Shelters test for these viruses, but a cat can test negative for months after infection, so there are no guarantees.

So cute!

We were devastated. He was quickly getting worse, and we took him to an emergency animal hospital an hour away with an internist on staff. Honestly, it was uncertain if he was going to make it. BJ stayed in the hospital for several days, where he had two blood transfusions, a bone marrow biopsy, and a bunch of other tests and treatment. He was very sick, but through the whole thing he was friendly and alert, and you could tell the staff was rooting for him and giving him extra attention because of his personality. Being cute is a real survival skill for this little guy.

Thankfully he didn’t have FeLV, instead the anemia was caused by something called a “mycoplasma.” This bug had a field day because his immune system was compromised by the FIV virus. It can be easily cured, but was damaging his bone marrow and keeping him from producing and sustaining viable blood cells. He was getting a cocktail of antibiotics to kill the mycoplasma, and steroids/immune-suppressing drugs to give his bone marrow a chance to heal and produce new blood cells and to slow down the FIV. To complicate matters, the steroid made him diabetic, a risk we accepted, and he needs insulin injections twice daily. For months we were taking it one day at a time. BJ will always be sick, but thanks to our ability to provide this care for him, he can feel happy and healthy. He pays us back every day.

It wasn’t cheap–it cost us thousands of dollars, and he still needs medications and frequent trips to the vet. But it was our choice. If BJ lived with me in Denmark, that choice – and consequently his life – would have been extremely limited by how others think my income should be spent. BJ would have died to pay for an artist’s paint, a politician’s plane ticket, and the Queen’s morning cup of organic fair-trade coffee.

Tophat-tip to Animal for the title.