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This Veterinarian Makes House — and Penthouse — Calls
In her memoir, “Pets and the City,” Amy Attas reflects on three decades of caring for animals (and, by extension, humans) right in their own homes.
If you’ve ever tried to wrangle a hissing, scratching, flailing, selectively incontinent beast into a cat carrier, you’ll appreciate the way Amy Attas practices veterinary medicine: She makes house calls.
Attas has seen it all, from opulent penthouses to homes she describes in her new memoir, “Pets and the City,” as “so squalid I feared for my life just breathing in the air.” She X-rayed a sapphire ring-swallowing terrier. She treated a pornographer’s potbellied pig. Billy Joel was grateful for her attention to his three-legged black pug; Cher, less so, after her rescue dog was diagnosed with sarcoptic mange, contagious between species. Attas writes, “Cher flung her bathrobe open to reveal her iconic body in its naked entirety,” asking, “Does the rash on humans look like this?”
The majority of Attas’s patients — "my patients are dogs and cats; my clients are humans” — belong to ordinary people.
“Whether I’m trimming a billionaire’s cat’s nails or chatting with the building’s doorman about his dog’s limp, I treat every client the same, because each of them loves their pets wholeheartedly,” she writes. “Love knows neither rank not bank account.”
Last month, Attas talked with The New York Times about her work, her memoir and what she wishes more humans knew about living with (mostly) four-legged friends. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
First things first: Why don’t more vets make house calls?
House calls are more difficult than working in a hospital. I often spend 10 hours a day in the back seat of a car. I eat my breakfast and lunch there. You have to plan where your bathroom stops are going to be. However, my patients are less stressed in their homes.
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