Pets and the City
True Tales of a Manhattan House Call Veterinarian
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
One of Washington Post’s 5 “Feel-Good Books” of Summer 2024
New York City’s premier “house call veterinarian” takes you into the exclusive penthouses and four-star hotel rooms of the wealthiest New Yorkers and shows that, when it comes to their pets, they are just as neurotic as any of us.
When a pet is sick, people—even the rich and famous—are at their most authentic and vulnerable. They could have a Monet on the wall and an Oscar on the shelf, but if their cat gets a cold, all they want to talk about are snotty noses and sneezing fits. That’s when they call premier in-home veterinarian Dr. Amy Attas.
In Pets and the City, Dr. Amy shares all the funny, heartbreaking, and life-affirming experiences she’s faced throughout her thirty-year career treating the cats and dogs of New Yorkers from Park Avenue to the projects. Some of her stories are about celebs, like the time she saw a famous singer naked (no, her rash was not the same as her puppy’s). Others are about remarkable animals, like the skilled service dog who, after his exam was finished, left the room and returned with a checkbook in his mouth. Every tale in this rollicking, informative, and fun memoir affirms a key truth about animal, and human, nature: Our pets love us because their hearts are pure; we love them because they’re freaking adorable. On some level, we know that by caring for them, we are the best version of ourselves. In short: Our pets make us better people.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The rich and famous are just as obsessed with their pets as everyone else, according to this charming debut memoir from Attas, a veterinarian whose practice, City Pets, has been making house calls in New York City since 1992. Born in Queens, Attas was hired by an Upper East Side "Vet to the Stars" in 1987, but claims she was fired in a fit of jealousy after VIP client Joan Rivers specifically requested her services. Rivers went on to become a loyal supporter of Attas's private practice, the client roster of which ballooned with celebrities. Chronicling her encounters with notable New Yorkers, Attas portrays them as by turns endearingly vulnerable and incomprehensibly weird: a bighearted but clueless Cher asks for a midnight appointment for a dog with a contagious case of mange that she'd found in Italy and flown all the way back to New York; an eye-contact avoidant Ivana Trump never takes Attas's advice, and instead goes diagnosis shopping when she doesn't like what she hears. Attas also recounts her mirror-opposite experiences with that other class of New Yorkers in need of house calls: the homebound and disabled ("I am pretty sure I was the only health care professional she had any contact with," Attas writes of one such client). This bubbly tell-all has fascinating depths.
