Carole Wilbourn, a self-described cat therapist, who was recognized for her talent in decoding the emotional lifetime of cats, as confounding as that might appear to be, died on Dec. 23 at her house in Manhattan. She was 84.
Her demise was confirmed by her sister Gail Mutrux.
Ms. Wilbourn’s sufferers shredded sofas, rest room paper and romantic companions. They dirty rugs and beds. They galloped over their sleeping people within the wee hours. They hissed at infants, canine and different cats. They chewed electrical wires. They sulked in closets, and went on starvation strikes.
They suffered from childhood trauma, low vanity, nervousness, despair, jealousy and simply plain rage. And Ms. Wilbourn, who was self-taught — in school she had studied (human) psychology and majored in training — appeared significantly attuned to the internal workings of their furry minds. A minor Manhattan superstar, she was usually referred to as the kitty Freud, or the mom of cat psychiatry.
Cats hate change, she usually famous. Even a brand new slipcover on the couch can undo them. Cats are egocentric. Not like canine, who try to please their grasp, a cat strives to please itself. To mangle a cliché, joyful cat, joyful (human) life.
“A cat behaves badly when it’s attempting to speak,” she advised The Los Angeles Each day Information in 1990. “It’s sending an SOS. It’s saying, ‘Please assist me.’”
Ms. Wilbourn developed her specialty over a half-century after founding The Cat Follow, billed as Manhattan’s first cats-only hospital, in 1973 with Paul Rowan, a veterinarian. She mentioned she was the primary feline therapist within the nation, a declare that’s not recognized to have been disputed.
She was the writer of six books, together with “Cats on the Sofa” (first printed in 1982), which provided case research to assist cat lovers higher perceive their furry buddies. She handled sufferers as distant as Australia and Turkey (by telephone), and made home calls as distant as Maui.
“Cats have feelings,” she mentioned. “They get joyful and unhappy and pissed off, and, since I perceive feelings in folks, I perceive them in cats.”
She estimated that she had handled some 13,000 cats, and claimed a hit charge of 75 to 80 p.c. Take Snoopy, who didn’t wish to be held and performed tough when he was, and ran round in circles if he was over-excited. Sobriety, a 3-year-old tabby, scratched her personal pores and skin uncooked. Minina bit all guests, and needed to be locked away throughout dinner events. Ms. Wilbourn’s prognosis? Single cat syndrome. The therapy? One other cat, ideally a kitten; numerous consideration, however to not the kitten; and, in Sobriety’s case, Valium.
She as soon as handled a cat with Reiki vitality therapeutic after it had by chance been run by the dryer.
Ms. Wilbourn’s go-to prescriptions additionally included New Age and classical music, recordings of whale songs and an abundance of treats, like catnip (a pure antidepressant, she identified). She additionally recommended canny conduct modifications by the people, like having a brand new romantic associate feed the cat. She usually really useful, within the days of landlines and answering machines, that people name their pets and depart them cheerful messages. Her companies didn’t come low cost. Home-visits in Manhattan hovered at $400.
“If I lived anyplace moreover an enormous metropolis like New York,” she advised The New York Occasions in 2004, “I’d be on meals stamps.”
Carole Cecile Engel was born on March 19, 1940, within the Flushing part of Queens, considered one of 4 kids of Harriet (Greenwald) and Gustave Engel, a taxi driver. There have been no cats of their Queens house, however the household did have a canary named Petey. Carole graduated from Bayside Excessive College and attended Albany State College’s College of Schooling earlier than transferring to New York College, the place she studied psychology and earned a Bachelor of Science diploma in enterprise training in 1964.
Her first cat was a part-Siamese named Oliver, whom she adopted by an advert in The Village Voice. She was working in its place trainer and a Playboy bunny earlier than opening The Cat Follow with Dr. Rowan, whom she later married.
“She was very attuned to the animals, to their emotional states,” Dr. Rowan mentioned in an interview. “It was very uncommon for the time.” Because of this, their enterprise flourished.
An earlier marriage to David Wilbourn, a photographer, resulted in divorce, as did her marriage to Dr. Rowan. Along with Ms. Mutrux, her sister, she is survived by Orion 2, a Siamese.
Ms. Wilbourn was a canine lover too, and occasionally handled canines, although she by no means had a canine herself. However she had particular views about anti-cat folks. In her expertise, she mentioned, a few of those that claimed they have been allergic to cats usually simply didn’t like them.
“A cat is a free spirit and won’t be subservient,” she wrote in “The Inside Cat” (1978). “Individuals who derive their gratification from giving instructions that others should obey will be threatened by a cat. It’s arduous to say your sense of energy over a cat.”
