Dr. Alison Bradbury (DVM, 2012) was destined for her role as The Cat Doctor, even though she hails from a family of large animal veterinarians practicing in South Georgia. Her grandfather earned his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from Auburn University before the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine was organized. Her uncle, Dr. Robert McDaniel, is a fellow UGA alum and member of the DVM class of 1979.

Bradbury was raised in Gwinnett County and eventually put her own urban spin on the family business. In fact, her path to her practice specializing in feline medicine was entirely of her own making. She completed her undergraduate work in biology at the University of Georgia in 2004.

“I knew that I wanted to be a vet, but I had to go out to the real world for a moment, take a breather, make some money. And it actually ended up being really, really good for me, because what I ended up doing was working with my family for a little bit, realizing that maybe large animals were not for me,” Bradbury says.

She moved back north and did a stint at Zoo Atlanta, then saw a classified ad in the newspaper seeking an assistant for The Cat Doctor in Sandy Springs. “And I went, what? There’s a cat doctor?” She was hired and promoted to veterinary technician after testing for her license and later enrolled at the CVM. She returned to the practice after graduation and succeeded her former boss as The Cat Doctor upon his retirement.

Curiosity about cats

Bradbury finds cats to be enigmatic creatures, both emotionally and medically. “I’ve had so many cats over the years, and you can have everyone from the lap cat who will follow you around and will be everyone’s best friend and wants to be the center of attention, and then I have one cat where it is on his terms,” Bradbury says. “He loves me so much, he’ll live under my feet, and he’ll want to play with me and then the second I pick him up he’s like, ‘I don’t like you.’”

Cats also challenge her when they present with ailments needing her expertise.

“I always joke that cats don’t read the rule book. So, dogs, there’s a lot of classic dog diseases that are really easy to treat. Cats will do the exact opposite of what you think that they should,” she says.

Further complicating matters is the scarcity of therapies designed specifically for cats. “We have to take what we know from dogs and apply it to cats,” Bradbury says.

Research is turning the tide on that problem, and at UGA CVM, that research is being done in Bradbury’s name. Atlanta-based entrepreneur and philanthropist Lauren Amos endowed a chair position in Bradbury’s honor to enable more research into feline health.

Amos, a cat owner and client, shares Bradbury’s passion for the advancement of feline medicine.

“I want the College of Veterinary Medicine at UGA to be leading the way in feline health research,” Amos says. “It is my desire to do whatever I can to ensure that all cats in Georgia have the opportunity for the highest level of care.”

Seeking a cure

Dr. Chad Schmiedt, professor of small animal surgery at the UGA Veterinary Teaching Hospital, currently serves as the Alison Bradbury Chair in Feline Health. In a neat twist of fate, Schmiedt was on faculty when Bradbury was a student, and she says he was instrumental in her education.

Dr. Chad Schmiedt

Schmiedt runs the feline kidney transplant program at UGA, an innovative program that addresses one of the most common maladies in cats. He is one of only a handful of feline transplant specialists in the world. Schmiedt said the chair endowed by Amos has allowed him to explore new therapies for feline kidney disease.

“Holding the Alison Bradbury Chair in Feline Health has been an amazing opportunity for me in furthering service, teaching, and research for the betterment of feline medicine,” he says. “The funds available through the Chair position have enabled our research group to answer clinical questions which previously may have gone unanswered because of lack of funding. We have completed projects about feline blood pressure and feline platelet activity in cats with kidney disease and are currently working on identifying new markers and therapeutic targets in cats with kidney disease.”

The endowment is positioning UGA as the go-to source of information on cutting edge renal treatments for cats by allowing CVM to bring experts in feline health together with veterinarians for a unique continuing education opportunity. UGA will host the Feline Health Symposium in February of 2025, bringing national experts in feline medicine to Athens to share their knowledge with clinicians.

Hope for the future

Bradbury recalls the day an email arrived informing her of the endowment Amos was creating. She misunderstood what her practice manager, Abby, was telling her and thought the honorific was in the form of a bench in the CVM gardens. “I said, ‘We’ll have to go get a picture,’ and she said, ‘No, I think you need to read it a little closer.’”

After recovering from the initial shock, she began anticipating what will come of the gift to her alma mater. After so many years of telling clients she would try to cure their kitties with treatments developed for dogs, Bradbury is eager for the day she can prescribe therapies made just for cats.