You, my friend, live in one of Europe's poorest countries.
I have to pay around 70€ per cat for a standard check and almost 40€ just for some anti-flea stuff.
And most human food is not exactly ideal for cats because there is way too much salt, fat etc etc in it.
Yea, and, at least here, human food is waaayyy more expensive than dog food per meal lol. And less healthy for their diet.
Checkups here are like $120+, that doesn't include blood or fecal sample lab testing $40+ each, plus vaccinations every 1-3 years $60+ each, plus heartworm meds (monthly) and anti-flea (every 1-3 months), that comes out to like $30/month. Then teeth cleanings every 1-2 years ($500+). Its a bit cheaper outside the city but not even close to $30 USD.
Quality grain free dog food on the other hand is like $20 per month for a small dog, whereas my dinner is $10 min, unless I'm going super unhealthy or cup of noodles. By far the cheapest and most predictable part of dog ownership.
That sounds like waaaaaay over what I anticipated owning a pet would be like in other countries.
I live in Romania. It's... not so poor.
But our minimum wage is around 300$ per month. Without joking.
I guess that for us a 10$ for a doc vaccine and a 5$ for anti flea collar are somewhat ok, leaning to being expensive.
A person can eat out of 3 to 5$ per day, with two people eating good for 8$ per day.
Owning a dog means feeding him a lot of leftovers, and most dogs are very very healthy. Some people do buy special dog food, but the prices are similarly low. Since Romanians eat way more food made in house than other countries, it might be another reason why pets can eat it safely.
Now, we have vets, and all vaccines + medical notes + every checkup is 30$ first year and about 10$ every year or so.
Then again, compared to minimum wage, those amounts are not very small, so this might be why it's like this.
[Though owning a pet sounds like crazy expensive in other countries, when seeing American movies about kids wanting a pet, I would not have imagined it would be that expensive, and this would be a reason why parents would not allow kids to own one lol]
