Animal 911

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Dr. Amy Attas’s patients lick, scratch, and occasionally bite in her memoir, Pets and the City: True Tales of a Manhattan House Call Veterinarian (G.P. Putnam’s Sons). Attas launched City Pets, New York City’s first veterinary house-call practice, in 1992, caring for Biscuit, Sweetie, Squeaker, Roast Beef, Poochini, Vlad, Patsy Cline Jacobson, and many other four-legged creatures, whose humans include Cher, Billy Joel, Wayne Gretzky, Paul McCartney, Steve Martin, Joan Rivers ’54, and many other New Yorkers.

Attas, accompanied by a driver and nurse, administers vaccines, salves, and advice with a soothing voice that disarms even the most anxious pup. She takes the reader through her visits to the million-dollar apartments of the rich and famous — as well as walkups — as she calms cats, dishes on celebrities, and checks up on lonely pet owners.

“Our relationship with a pet is like no other,” she writes. “By bringing animals into our homes and making them part of our families, sharing our lives with them, we are at our most compassionate, empathetic, and selfless.”

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In Pets and the City, people and their pets bond with each other, Attas meets her now-husband through his dog Valkyrie, and Cher is relieved to find out that she did not contract mange from a stray dog she adopted in Italy.

Attas was inspired to become a vet after reading James Herriot’s classic book All Creatures Great and Small, about his adventures as a country vet in northern England during the 1930s. After graduating from Barnard, she went on to the University of Pennsylvania, receiving a master’s degree in animal behavior and her veterinary degree before launching a career for pets and their people, which she sees as a calling, not a service. “I believe that our love for animals defines our humanity.”