DOC'S GOOD MEDICINE 'I always wanted to sew'

Retirement hasn't slowed Cathy down, in fact it's turned her passsion into a new business

- Aroha Awarau

After a longstanding career as a public health doctor, Cathy Pikholz has ditched the white coat and stethoscope for a needle and thread, and following her passion for sewing and making fashion accessories for our four-legged friends.

The 61-year-old has started her own business, Sew Cathy Sew, which she operates from her inner-city Auckland apartment, making bandanas for dogs and collar covers for cats.

"With colourful collar covers, birds can see cats coming and have time to fly away," says Cathy.

The animal enthusiast was making clothes even as a young child growing up in the town of Paarl in South Africa. Her mother, Dorothy Brooks, taught her how to sew and she was making lined tailored suits as a teenager.

Cathy says she would have loved to pursue a career in design and sewing, but was swayed into the medical profession because she was following in the footsteps of her mother, who was also a doctor and died of cancer when Cathy was just 16.

"My mum was a very strong woman,” she confides. “You had to be tough to be a female doctor in the '50s. She didn't take nonsense from anybody. It was a misogynistic industry and she had to be strong to survive.

“When I was growing up in the late '70s, if you were bright, you were steered into a career of medicine or law. I also felt pressure from my parents to study medicine.”

Cathy married fellow South African doctor Geoff and they immigrated to New Zealand in 1987 to escape the apartheid regime.