People hardly give a second thought to insuring their homes, cars, themselves and families, but regularly forget their pets.
That omission can often prove disastrous if the animal gets sick, and not just financially for the pet owner.
Given costs of up to $2000 for major surgery - the cuddly cat or loyal labrador could find themselves turfed out of home - abandoned after years of unconditional love - due to prohibitively expensive treatment.
The answer, veterinarians say, is pet insurance.
Although the industry is only small in Australia, it is well established in Europe, where almost half of Swedish pet owners and 20 per cent of British ones have policies for their household animals.
RSPCA Victoria president doctor Hugh Wirth urged people to protect themselves against their pets needing serious medical attention.
"That's exactly why the RSPCA has long supported pet insurance," doctor Wirth said.
"If you can't afford to pay for annual vaccinations, annual worming ... then frankly you shouldn't have a pet at all.
"People nowadays insure their cars, insure their houses against devastating accidents ... we're just simply saying it's just as expensive to fix a pet."
An Australian Companion Animal Council report last year estimated cat and dog owners spent about $8 million on insurance, with the number of new policies growing each year.
The RSPCA, among others, already offers pet insurance and it is this market Manchester Unity is hoping to tap into.
It is offering to have the "whole family covered" and recently launched a new product for dogs and cats.
The company says 63 per cent of Australian households have a pet, including 3.75 million dogs and 2.43 million cats, and they spend $4.62 billion a year on them.
While it currently has only a few hundred policies on the books, business relationship manager David Rees hoped it will be "in the thousands" by the end of 2008.
"For us, it seems to be an untapped market so we see a lot of potential in there," Mr Rees said.
"It's very early days for us, but the sky's the limit in terms of what we want to try and achieve in terms of product and membership growth, but also the impact on the wider community."
He said pet insurance was behind only car and home insurance in the UK and was growing 200 per cent a year in the United States.
A 2004 American Animal Hospital Association survey found three per cent of United States pet owners had insurance for their animals.
And in 2005, the two largest companies held more than half a million policies, with most of the growth taking place since 2001, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA).
California-based Veterinary Pet Insurance's policy holders more than doubled between 2001 and 2005, from 195,000 to 392,000.
Although off a much smaller base, Pethealth Inc. saw an almost six-fold increase - from 22,000 to 153,000 - in the same period.
AVMA spokesman Thomas McPheron said the concept was quickly catching on in the US.
"When you consider how many people have signed up ... it's pretty impressive," Mr McPheron said from Chicago.
"Definitely people are picking up on it pretty quickly here. It's really taken off in the last decade."
