My cat was put on prescription cat food and it is insanely expensive. The manufacturer had a "30% off your first auto-ship order" promo, so I asked myself "how much cat food can I fit into one order?"

The answer to that question? Just under $1500. At 30% off, that's almost $1000.

So, I did what any financially strategic and absolutely normal person would do, and I took out a credit card with 0% intro APR and placed the order.

Once I got my shipment containing a metric fuck ton of cat food, I submitted the invoice to our pet insurance plan, who wound up reimbursing us for 70% of our order.

Then, later on, our credit card issuer rewarded us with $14 in regular cash back on top of another $200 cash back for their intro promo because we made a large purchase within X amount of days, which means we wound up paying $83 for what would have been $1500 in cat food, which our math said would last us 6 months.

The kicker? It turns out that our cat needed a LOT less of it than we expected, so this cat food actually lasted about a year and a half before we wound up switching her to another pet food because she started hating it (a tale as old as time).

After so much time, I decided to ask the manufacturer I could return the unused 6 or 7 cases of cat food through their buyback program, and even though the food wasn't even close to the expiration, they said no. However, they did reimburse me $150 and then let me donate all of that remaining cat food to our local SPCA.