It doesn't bother me that you spend money on your pets. I'm not arguing that you shouldn't buy your animals diamond studded collars, pay for agility training or spend tens of thousands of dollars per year on vet bills for your beloved little doggies and kitties. That's all fine with me.
What is disturbing to me is the level of vitriol coming from your side, Cassie. My impression is that you, and probably others, believe that those of us who are unwilling to take out a second mortgage on our homes to get poor little Fido a kidney transplant are bad people, or evil or "morons," as you said earlier. What's up with all the anger and hatred? If you believe strongly in what you're doing, then by all means carry on, but please don't vilify the rest of us who choose not to anthropomorphize our animals.
Treating cats and dogs like they are, "members of the family," is a relatively recent phenomenon in our society. If you go back just a few generations in the U.S., I'm pretty sure that MOST people would've agreed with me. I'm not saying that our grandparents, great grandparents, etc., didn't love their pets. I'm sure many of them did. But, traditionally people kept pets for practical reasons: cats kept mice and rats away from their houses and out of the grain supply that they used to feed their livestock; Dogs were kept to scare away both 2 and 4 legged intruders, to herd and protect livestock, etc. When pets became old and sick and seemed like they were suffering too much, somebody would go out into the back yard, dig a hole, put a bullet in the back of Fido's head and bury him. The idea of taking Fido in to have a vet run a bunch of tests to try to diagnose and treat chronic illnesses like cancer or diabetes never occurred to most people until relatively recently.
It used to be most vets took care of livestock. Now, it's hard to find a large animal vet. They're all getting old and retiring. Younger vets mostly are opting to specialize in taking care of little doggies and kitties, because that's where the money is.