I know, I know, you are reading a personal finance blog. You probably already know the myriad of reasons you need an emergency fund, you don’t really need me to give you another. And yet, this one experience, besides being an actual emergency, touches on so many of the reasons you need an emergency fund, that I cannot help but share it with you.

Last week, my admin woke up one morning with her face pretty much all swollen. She could barely open her eyes. She managed to get ahold of her neighbor who agreed to take her to urgent care, and she called me.

When her neighbor came in to get her, her adult daughter was with her, and she noticed that there was also something wrong with my admin’s cat. So, the neighbor took my admin to urgent care. Her daughter took the cat to the vet.

It turns out that my admin and her cat were essentially swarmed by spiders that night and both received a number of bites.

While the doctors did not admit my admin, they were worried about her heart and liver and required that she stay with someone that night. And while the vet tried to save her cat, there was just too much venom in the kitty’s system, and she had to be put down.

My admin ended up missing 3.5 days of work, and had a giant vet bill. Luckily, she did not have to pay for the two visits from the exterminators. (A giant nest of spiders was found behind her fireplace. What they were doing in the bed/why they swarmed/attacked that night, no one knows.)

If ever something qualified for use of emergency funds, this was it, but she doesn’t have one. She had to scramble. First, there was the unexpected vet bill. Second, there was the little matter of her not having enough paid time off banked to cover 28 hours. That meant that as things stood, she’d have a giant bill and a smaller paycheck.

On the second matter, given that this was a freak occurrence, I allowed her to use her floating holiday- which normally can’t be used in an unscheduled situation, to cover one day of her time off. In addition, I allowed her to use her medical appointment benefit (2 hours paid not coming from PTO), as well, even though that is only supposed to be used on days when you actually come in to work. So I bent some rules, but believe I did the right thing.

My admin ended up cancelling her scheduled 2 week Hawii vacation in September. This will allow her to pay the vet bill, and given that she had to use all of her PTO, she would not have had the vacation time for that, anyway.

Me bending the rules and her cancelling her vacation both could have been avoided had she had an emergency fund.

Now, she’s hoping to reschedule her vacation for January, but she’s still eating cancellation penalties and change fees.

This was an awful experience, and I do not wish it on anyone, least of all someone as sweet as my admin. But it really served to remind me that freak occurrences happen. And those situations come with enough stress of their own, that the last thing we ever want to have to worry about is money.