About Scottsdale Cat Clinic
About Us
I didn’t expect that I would ever open my own clinic. As a veterinary student and later as an associate, I was quite content with concentrating solely on medicine and letting someone else worry about payroll, leases, taxes and inventory. I enjoyed being off work once I left the clinic.
But as I gained more experience as a doctor, a vision of a particular kind of practice began to form in my head. I saw a clinic that would offer clients and their cats the best that veterinary medicine had to offer in a soothing and relaxing environment. I saw a clinic that would cater exclusively to cats, enabling both the staff and the doctors to specialize in the unique physiology of cats. I saw a hospital that, without dogs, would significantly reduce the stress that cats experience when seeing a veterinarian.
The medical vision was clear from the beginning. But as we slowly put together a business plan, I started to see what kind of owner and what kind of small business person I wanted to be. We wanted to be an integral part of the community, part of a dense fabric that made up a true neighborhood, not just a nice place in a strip mall. When we first moved to Arizona, we ended up in Scottsdale almost by chance. Since then, we’ve grown to love the city; from spending hours at the Civic Center library to taking classes through the park district to picnicking at the Sunday concerts on the Civic Center mall. We wanted to solidify our part in this community, so we built our clinic in the same neighborhood where we’ve spent most of our time—downtown Scottsdale.
And I wanted my business to be sensible in its use of resources, and that meant locating our clinic where we live. You may notice that a fair number of our employees, including me, ride our bikes to work. It’s something we encourage and reward. We also do our part to minimize our impact in other ways. There’s no doubt that the medical field can produce a fair amount of waste, but we concentrate on reducing and recycling as much as we can. One of our first decisions as potential owners was to make the clinic paperless, so you won’t see endless reams of papers and files. All our charts are kept electronically. We’ve also partnered with one of our major suppliers to use reusable containers to ship supplies eliminating one stream of incoming cardboard. Some of our furniture and lighting was recycled from older clinics. And we are working on a way to power the clinic with used cat litter (though results have been disappointing so far).
We also think it very important to give back to the community in some fashion. The best way to do that, of course, is to use our expertise. We have eagerly joined forces with local shelters and rescue organizations to help with the stray and feral cat population. A portion of our workweek has been dedicated to helping spay, neuter, test and heal stray cats for these noble organizations.
From a business standpoint, we are proud members of Local First Arizona and the Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce, supporting locally owned businesses in the area. We are also supporters of Roots and Shoots, an organization for young people and adults helping make positive change for communities, animals and the environment.
