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To give cats reason to purr, vet bans dogs at North Shore clinic

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Marcia Toumayan

When Marcia Toumayan met Fritz he was suffering from seizures and no one knew what to do with him.

Fritz is now one of 12 cats cared for by the Toumayan household — two more live outside and are considered feral.

“Cats find me,” Dr. Toumayan said.

Many of her felines, all sizes and colors, were cats with special needs that she chose to adopt because owners couldn’t afford their treatment or didn’t know how to care for them.

In a few weeks, Dr. Toumayan will open a 6,000 square-foot, cat-only veterinarian clinic, the Cat Clinic of Chattanooga, on Cherokee Boulevard. The clinic, a $900,000 investment, will have six employees, and Dr. Toumayan said she plans to add a grooming, boarding and adoption area once the operation is launched.

Dr. Toumayan said the Cat Clinic of Chattanooga is one of a handful of cat-only clinics in Tennessee and one of around 200 nationwide.

Chrissy Wyatt, a receptionist at the clinic, said it allows for more specialization and better treatment for cats.

“I am really excited to get this started,” Ms. Wyatt said. “It is going to be a great location and a really neat thing.”

Often cats become very frantic when they can see, hear or smell dogs, she said, and a cat clinic can solve that problem, she said.

“It causes less stress on cats when there are no dogs around,” Ms. Wyatt said.

Having majored in English at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Dr. Toumayan, 51, never planned to be a vet.

She moved to Atlanta with her husband after college and worked in banking before she realized life at a financial institution didn’t really fit what she had envisioned for her life.

“I wasn’t really fulfilled,” she said. “I had a love for science and animals.”

In 1991 she decided to go to veterinary school at the University of Georgia. She worked every summer in clinics and after school moved to Charlotte, N.C., to work in one of the few feline-only clinics in the South as an associate veterinarian, she said.

“That just did it for me,” she said. “I was hooked on cats-only practice.”

The atmosphere at a cats-only practice is quieter and calmer, and Dr. Toumayan said she loves learning how cats and owners find each other.

“Cats happen to people. They adopt us,” she said. “People go out and get a dog.”

If you ask Dr. Toumayan why she owns so many cats and wants to start a cat clinic, she will say that she appreciated the egalitarian order of the feline kingdom.

Dogs see owners as pack leaders. In many ways their relationship with an owner is hierarchical.

“They respond to people in that way,” she said.

On the other hand, in cat society there are not necessarily leaders and followers, she said.

“There is more of a level playing field than with dogs,” she said. “It appeals to me; that is just how weird I am.”

Dr. Toumayan said she is fascinated by the medical problems cats face.

Dogs are notorious for having low thyroid levels, while cats rarely ever suffer from low thyroid levels. In fact, older cats often have thyroid levels that are too high, she said.

Arthritis in cats and feline diabetes are other interesting medical conditions Dr. Toumayan said she has learned to enjoy treating.

“The medicine is like putting a puzzle together,” she said. “It’s like figuring out a cat puzzle.”

Personal glance

* Name: Marcia Toumayan

* Age: 51

* Education: UTC, University of Georgia

* Services: Individual cat health assessment, preventive care, diagnostic testing for infections, metabolic and other diseases, surgery and anesthesia, emergency and specialist referrals, behavioral counseling and geriatric care.