This is later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast. More what you hear weekday afternoons on the Drive.
Doctor Amy Addis is an award winning veterinarian and founder of City Pets, which for more than three decades has been the premier veterinary medical house call practice for dogs and cats. She's also the personal vet to the rich and famous, including Billie Joel, Paul McCartney, Steve Martin, and many more. She's written on a volume of lovely stories called Pets and the City, True Tales of Manhattan House called Veterinarian, Doctor Amy Addis. Good to have you along today.
Thank you so much for having me.
So I think so many people think that celebrities call their vet and say, oh, dude, don't let my Moffi's feet touch anything, oh than Italian Corduall it's simply not done. Is that the case.
Absolutely not My clients and those are the humans, including the celebrities that you mentioned. They're normal people who love their pets. And I have the privilege of getting to know the celebrities, the billionaires, the normal people. Everyone through a different lens, and that's the lens of someone who comes and helps care for their pets, and that just
brings everybody down to the same common denominator. These wonderful celebrities you're just mentioned, they're people, and I get to meet them and be with them as normal people.
When they first reach out to you, do you know or do they just make a phone call like anybody else's, Oh no, my dog's choking on something. What'll I do?
You pretty much know? And that's helpful because I get to like get the woo who's out, you know, in advance. So when I arrive at their house, I'm completely professional and not star struck.
So you go to them, not they to you.
I go to them. I have a veterinary house called practice, and I just want to explain to your listeners that's from being a mobile veterinarian. A lot of people are familiar with mobile vat where you pull up in a van and the animal comes out to the van. I don't do that. We pull up and we bring all of our equipment up to our client's apartments, so we are literally working in the kitchens, living rooms, dining rooms,
and believe it or not, bathrooms. I spend a lot of time in people's bathrooms because my cat clients aren't always My cat patients aren't always cooperative. So if you let a cat go on the living room coffee table in a seven room Park Avenue apartment, it could take you an hour to find it.
Yes, I know it all too well. I have to seal point Himalayans and they're very skittish, So yeah, you have to confine them as best you can exactly.
And what I tell my cat people is your cat's not going to like me, but they'll like me more than the regular veterinarian that they have to go to in a carrier and sit in a waiting room with barking dogs.
Oh. Absolutely, we're talking to doctor Amy Addas. Pets in the City is her book, True Tales of a Manhattan House called Veterinarian. You don't have to name names. I understand you have to protect your clients as well. But what was one of the more unusual calls that you had and how did you remedy it?
The most unusual call I had was to go to the townhouse of a well known billionaire and give a Rabi's vaccine to a caricle lynx. And it's you're not familiar with what a characal lynx is it is actually a while it is not a domestic cat. Now, it is illegal to have these in New York City, So
my first reaction was, I can't possibly do that. But the client had a permit for the cat, and they had a professional cat handler, and they were transporting it back to a location that was a more natural environment. And my job was to comply with USD and give this cat a Rabi's vaccine, which I did. But boy, that was an unusual experience.
I should say, speaking of how to contain a cat, I can't imagine bigger than a domestic cat being held up in a New York Man East Side apartment.
Yeah. Well, unfortunately this was a legal one where they had permission. But there are stories. Although I've never had the personal experience of people having wildcats in their apartments like tigers.
You see some of these celebrities too, in their most casual Is there one particular instance that stands out in your memory of when you were answered the door in a bathrobe or other shall we say, unusual attire.
So I've never had an experience of a celebrity starting the visit without appropriate clothing, but I did have a Share was my client, and she had a beautiful little rescue dog that she adopted when she was in Italy making tea with Mussolini, and I had taken care of this dog. She arrived in New York, she was heading back to California. She was in for a few days, and I had had multiple visits with her little dog, Pepo, but I hadn't met her yet, and I was so disappointed.
So Pipo's treatment, and I tell all the details of this in the book, required an injection of a substance that stings when you give it. And on the first time I gave it, he was quite as can be. And on the second visit, when I gave it, he screamed bloody murder. And then Chaer came running in the room. She was wearing her bathrobe, she had her hair in curlers, she had white goop all over her face. It was fantastic, and she started yelling, who are you and what did
you do to my dog? And when I explained, and I explained what I was treating and that this potentially could be contagious to humans, she opened up her bathrobe and her full nakedness said, do you think this could be related to what my dog has. It was not. She just had a little heat rash. But the point was we started out clothes. But in that instance I got an eye full of share and it reminded me I should go to the gym or off.
Well, we're talking to doctor Amy Adas, Pets and the City. True Tales of Manhattan's House called Veterinarian. Did you, when you started out in veterinary schools say to yourself, I'm gonna be the vet to the stars you watch?
I did not, But when I started out in veterinary school I knew that it was the whole picture that I loved. It wasn't just I wanted to work with animals. I loved animals, I loved medicine. I loved interacting with people. So doing house calls was a perfect way for me to do all three of those things and use my abilities to the best. So a few things happened. My New York experience before starting the house called practice introduced me to some people. And this unique style of practice
is very attractive to the boldface name crowd. So I think it just was a natural fit.
And so you just started on your own and it grew into what it is now.
So I started my veterinary career at a hospital called the Animal Medical Center. It's a wonderful teaching hospital with one hundred or so veterinarians in it. I went into small animal practice on Park Avenue and I worked there for four years before starting my house called practice. So there was a base before I started, But once I started house calls, it just grew exponentially because people love the concept.
I imagine, so and then the word spread, and then more and more clients started talking about you and yeah, I know a person and they'll come right to your place and take care of you. So I imagine that you are often running.
I think the thing that helped my practice the most when I first started out was while I was at someone's house and the phone would ring. They'd answer the phone and say, I can't talk to you right now, my vet is here, and then I would hear from the one sided conversation, Yes, my vet mixed house calls. I'll call you later and give you her number. So it was definitely word of mouth.
Pets in the City is the book. It's the true tales of a Manhattan house called Veterinarian doctor Amy Addas is that veterinarian and founder of City Pets and the book is available everywhere you get your books. Thank you for joining us today and doctor thank you for the great book.
Thank you. I enjoyed being here.
Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation