Dr. Louis Camuti; Manhattan's First Cats-Only Veterinarian

Once upon a time, in Manhattan in the year 1904, a young Italian immigrant by the name Louis Camuti lay in bed, feverish with typhoid. His mother had gone out to run a quick errand while leaving supper cooking on the stove. While she was away, the stove caught fire and smoke began to fill the apartment.

Eleven-year-old Louis knew little of what was happening. Even if he had, he was too weak to get out of bed, much less escape the home altogether. As he lay there in his fevered state, the family cat jumped onto his chest and breathed forcefully into his face.

“As if to clear away the smoke and protect me from the fire,” he said later in life, “the cat stayed on my chest until my mother rushed into my room.”

Camuti believed wholeheartedly that his kitty had saved his life. Later, he would become the very first veterinary doctor whose sole clients were cats. As he put it, he’d had an “epiphany to serve cats as his life mission.”

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Born in Parma, Italy, and raised in Manhattan, New York, Louis Camuti received his veterinary surgeon’s degree from New York University in 1920.

At first, however, becoming “the cat doctor” sounded less like a career than a punchline. In the early twentieth century, veterinarians devoted most of their attention to horses, cattle and other farm animals. Horses pulled delivery wagons, powered city transportation and hauled freight. Dairy cows represented livelihoods. Sick livestock could bankrupt an entire family.

Cats?

Cats were expected to look after themselves.



If one became ill, many owners simply accepted that it had reached the end of its natural life. Veterinary textbooks devoted only a handful of pages to feline diseases, and some veterinary schools barely discussed cats at all. Even among veterinarians, cats had earned an unfortunate reputation. They scratched, bit, hid under furniture and often resisted treatment with enthusiasm.

Camuti eventually titled his autobiography All My Patients Are Under the Bed, and it wasn’t an exaggeration. He joked that the first ten minutes of nearly every appointment involved crawling on hands and knees with a flashlight while an anxious owner insisted, “He’s never done this before.”

The introduction to his autobiography, published in 1980, one year before Camuti´s death, explains what his days look like, travelling around New York City to visit cats:
 
"Winkie-Pooh, the sailing cat; Holly, who loves to be vacuumed; Mr. Cat, the incorrigible thief (of gloves, skirts, or whatever he can get his paws on); a male Siamese who, confounding all theories, is an extremely devoted father; Barnaby (Bastardo, to Camuti), who yowls and paces until the mean doctor leaves the premises. (All of his charges, says Camuti ruefully, take cover when they hear his two short, peremptory rings.) On current cat issues, he's commonsensical and humane.

He's in favor [sic] of neutering, and against declawing (which he considers barbaric); and he simply won't treat cats that are trained performers. The focus of his interest is the bond between owner and cat, he tends to look upon expensive pedigreed cats as status symbols. But city cats he thinks are terrific--on account of their adaptability.

Among his clients are a woman who knits caps out of shed cat fur, and a number of literary and theatrical folk (including some--like Tallulah Bankhead and Marlene Dietrich--whom he remembers less than fondly). He's been to cat birthday parties, a cat wedding, and even a cat Bar Mitzvah--where the Bar Mitzvah boy never showed up. (And--oh, yes--he's allergic to cats.)"

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Camuti’s unorthodox devotion to his patients and his insistence that feline illness could be caused from invisible triggers like stress, anxiety and personality disorders was not just borne of his intellect, but from his personal suffering as a young veterinary doctor and second lieutenant in the New York Cavalry in 1919. Horses were his first patients, and among these, countless contracted a disease they called “shipping fever”. Now, we’d probably identify most of these cases as a type of pneumonia caused by the stress of long-distance travel and a build-up of malignant bacteria in the lungs.

The horses who became the sickest were euthenised, and the norm was not to use barbiturates or chemicals to soothe the patient.
In his book, Camuti says, "I told myself over and over again that the animal was sick and could not be saved. Wasn't I really sparing it pain? yes, but it was something I had to remind myself of everyday. I knew that bringing the peace of death to an animal was as much a part of being a veterinarian as helping a dog to give birth to its puppies, but still I suffered. I guess I was still a kid, and like all kids who think of becoming doctors, the first thought is of life. It is only later on that you have to face death as part of the job."

It was serendipitous that a man like Louis Camuti sought to bring more compassion and tenderness to animals that were overlooked, at a time when his profession was fated to evolve. Horses, once the veterinary lifeblood of the city, declined rapidly in numbers in the decades following the First World War and the outbreak of the Spanish Flu that coincided with the unfortunate hundreds of cases of Shipping Fever.

In the 1930s, our dear Camuti stopped practising at the small animal clinics he’d been part of, and opened his own house-call veterinary service for cats only. The rise of the house pet was in full swing, and that included both adopted alley cats and expensive, pedigreed kitties whose owners may have purchased some of the very first commercial cat foods on the market. A 1939 poster for Spratt’s Cat Food announces that it contains meat, fish and cod-liver oil in an appetising form, and furthermore that it is pleasant to handle and does not go off and taint other food.

Camuti’s decision to treat only cats was still considered unusual, even within a profession that was beginning to change. In the 1930s, the idea of a feline-only veterinarian was almost unheard of. A doctor who devoted his entire career to animals that many people still considered independent, self-sufficient, and even somewhat aloof was taking a considerable professional risk.
But Camuti had noticed something that many other veterinarians overlooked: cats were not difficult patients because they were stubborn. They were difficult patients because humans often failed to understand them.

A cat’s way of communicating illness was subtle. Unlike a horse that might collapse or a dog that might whine, limp, or openly seek attention, a sick cat often disappeared into silence. It might stop eating, hide in a closet, avoid its owner, or simply become less interested in the world around it. To someone unfamiliar with feline behaviour, these changes could appear like personality quirks.

To Camuti, they were medical clues.

He believed that a veterinarian treating a cat needed to understand more than anatomy and disease. They needed to understand the individual animal. A cat’s temperament, habits, fears, and relationship with its owner were all part of the picture.

This was one of the reasons he chose to make house calls.

In the decades before the modern animal hospital became common, Camuti travelled throughout New York City with his veterinary bag, climbing apartment stairs and entering homes where his patients were waiting — or, more often, hiding. He believed that a frightened cat in a strange clinic was not always showing its true personality. The home environment revealed much more.

A cat that appeared aggressive at a veterinary office might simply be terrified. A cat that refused to be handled might not be difficult; it might be communicating that it did not feel safe.

By going to the cat instead of bringing the cat to him, Camuti changed the entire dynamic of the examination.

He also witnessed something that would become central to modern veterinary medicine: the powerful connection between emotional wellbeing and physical health.

Long before veterinary behaviour became its own specialty, Camuti understood that cats could be affected by changes in their environment. A move to a new home, the arrival of another animal, the loss of a companion, or even changes in routine could influence a cat’s behaviour and sometimes contribute to illness.

At the time, this way of thinking was unconventional. Animals were still often viewed primarily through the lens of biology and function. A horse was valuable because it could work. A cow was valuable because it produced. Even companion animals were frequently judged by their usefulness.

Camuti saw something different.

The value of a cat was not in what it produced or what work it performed. Its value came from the relationship it formed with the people who loved it.

And those relationships could be extraordinary.

His patients were not anonymous animals passing through a clinic. They had names, personalities, habits, and stories. There was the cat who would greet his owner every day, the cat who became anxious when a family member was absent, the cat who trusted one person and avoided everyone else. To Camuti, these details were not amusing side notes — they were part of understanding the patient.

This philosophy also shaped his views on how cats should be treated. He opposed declawing because he believed it was an extreme solution to a human inconvenience rather than a medical necessity. He supported neutering because he saw it as a responsible way to improve feline health and reduce suffering. He rejected treating cats as performers or objects, believing that animals deserved respect rather than exploitation.

In many ways, Camuti was ahead of his time.

The world around him was only beginning to recognize what he already believed: that companion animals were not simply possessions. They were individuals capable of forming deep bonds with humans.

And as more families welcomed cats into their homes, more people began searching for someone who understood them.

That someone became Louis Camuti.

By the middle of the twentieth century, he had become famous enough that his practice was no longer an oddity but a phenomenon. Owners sought him out because he understood what others did not. He recognized that cats were not simply smaller, more difficult dogs. They were a different kind of animal with a different kind of medicine.

The good doctor made house calls right up until his death – at which time he was reportedly en route to see a patient. Afterwards, his family received letters and tributes from around the world. In his daughter’s words, “In an era when cats were mousers and something you would kick down the stairs, without a second thought, my Dad came along with his natural love for them and he gave them dignity.”

Today, cats have their own specialists all over the world, including some of the most amazing and talented veterinarians that I’ve ever seen work with my own adopted clowder of cute and crazy weirdos. Cats are diagnosed and treated for everything from diabetes to chronic anxiety — and their medications are not just smaller doses of dog drugs, which in some cases can literally be fatal. Pet doctors help us sneak antibiotics, vitamins and medications for chronic illnesses right into our fur babies’ food and drink – and when that doesn’t work, they put on the Tomahawk critter gloves and do what has to be done.

And still, of course, the kitties just never get enough time.

*My painful and heartfelt goodbye this week to this absolute tiger of a lady, Sweetpea Mama Kitty.
Love you forever, beautiful girl!

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