Bay Ridge veterinarian Laura D’Onofrio has some cat-friendly tricks up her sleeve to soothe her finicky feline patients.
“I purr at them and nuzzle their necks,” she says. “People think cats purr because they’re happy, but they do it to make themselves feel better.”
D’Onofrio’s bedside manner is as important as the treatment she dispenses to the dozens of pets — including dogs, rabbits, birds, and turtles — she sees every week at One Love Animal Hospital on Third Avenue.
Some need vaccines or general check-ups, others relief from colds and infections, but the challenging cases are the ones that require the healer’s canny sleuthing.
“Animals can’t talk, but they can give you clues to how they are feeling,” says D’Onofrio, who looks for reactions and distress signals. “They may lick my hand when I’m feeling them, as if to say, “Yes, that’s the spot.’ ”
Dizzy, a sluggish pit bull she examined recently, wasn’t suffering from old-age as her owners suspected, but a tumor on her spleen that threatened to turn deadly.
“I could feel it with my hand,” says the Woman of Distinction, 31, who performed surgery right away, delivering a happy ending.
“Three weeks later, Dizzy had so much energy she was bounding off the walls!” she adds.
The Bensonhurst-born vet, who has two dogs and three cats of her own, lives by the motto, “animals are my life,” and assures apprehensive owners that their loved ones are like family to her.
“I tell them I will always treat your pet as if they were my own,” says D’Onofrio, who routinely checks in on hospitalized patients after-hours to give them a pain injection or a cuddle.
Her tender touch has removed follicular cysts from canaries, bandaged the fractured leg of a chicken, cured a turtle’s pneumonia, and removed an abscess from the salivary gland of a green anole — a tiny reptile weighing less than a nickel.
Part of her job is keeping owners informed.
Archie, an adopted Yorkie-schnauzer from Bay Ridge, had an ear infection that was worrying his new owner Courtney Taleporos, until D’Onofrio provided relief, along with a free dog-feeding tip.
“She gently inspected Archie’s ears and flushed them out, then showed us how to do the same at home and gave us some drops to clean up the infection,” says Taleporos, who took the vet’s advice to steer clear of chicken for her tail-wagger. “Several months and a strict, no-chicken diet later, Archie’s ears are infection-free.”
Sometimes there is no happy ending for the pet, his owner, and his vet.
D’Onofrio recently euthanized Snoop, a 15-year-old Maltese dog with a heart murmur, after his medication stopped working, his breathing grew increasingly labored, and his tongue turned blue.
“His owners knew it was time,” she says. “Afterwards they cried and I cried.”
D’Onofrio’s veterinary journey began when she started volunteering as a teen at her local vet for a reason that still holds true for her.
“Animals can’t help themselves,” she says. “They need someone to be their advocate, and I feel I can do that.”
OCCUPATION: Veterinarian.
COMPANY: One Love Animal Hospital.
CLAIM TO FAME: Being a veterinarian.
FAVORITE PLACE: My home.
WOMAN I ADMIRE: My late grandmother, Josephine DiOnofrio, because she was compassionate, hard-working, and fun loving.
MOTTO: Animals are my life.
