Carole Wilbourn, a self-described cat therapist, who was identified for her talent in decoding the emotional lifetime of cats, as confounding as that may appear to be, died on Dec. 23 at her residence in Manhattan. She was 84.
Her loss of life 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, canines and different cats. They chewed electrical wires. They sulked in closets and went on starvation strikes.
They suffered from childhood trauma, low vanity, anxiousness, despair, jealousy and simply plain rage. And Ms. Wilbourn, who was self-taught — in faculty she had studied (human) psychology and majored in training — appeared notably attuned to the interior workings of their furry minds. A minor Manhattan celeb, she was typically known as the kitty Freud, or the mom of cat psychiatry.
Cats hate change, she typically famous. Even a brand new slipcover on the couch can undo them. Cats are egocentric. Not like canines, who attempt to please their masters, a cat strives to please itself. To mangle a cliché, completely happy cat, completely happy (human) life.
“A cat behaves badly when it’s making an attempt to speak,” Ms. Wilbourn advised The Los Angeles Every 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 stated she was the primary feline therapist within the nation, a declare that isn’t identified to have been disputed.
She was the writer of six books, together with “Cats on the Sofa” (first printed in 1982), which supplied case research to assist cat lovers higher perceive their furry associates. She handled sufferers as far-off as Australia and Turkey (by telephone), and made home calls as far-off as Maui.
“Cats have feelings,” she stated. “They get completely happy and unhappy and pissed off, and, since I perceive feelings in individuals, I perceive them in cats.”
Ms. Wilbourn estimated that she had handled 13,000 cats and claimed a hit price of 75 to 80 p.c. Take Snoopy, who didn’t wish to be held and performed tough when he was, and who 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; a lot of consideration, however to not the kitten; and, in Sobriety’s case, Valium.
Ms. Wilbourn as soon as handled a cat with Reiki energy-healing remedy after it had by chance been run via the dryer.
Her 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 habits modifications by the people in a cat’s life, like having a brand new romantic associate feed it.
She typically advisable, 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 wherever moreover a giant 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, one in all 4 youngsters of Harriet (Greenwald) and Gustave Engel, a taxi driver. There have been no cats of their Queens condominium, however the household did have a canary named Petey.
Carole graduated from Bayside Excessive Faculty and attended the State College of New York at Albany (now the College at Albany), 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 via an advert in The Village Voice. She was working in its place instructor 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 stated in an interview. “It was very uncommon for the time.” In consequence, 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 from time to time handled canines, although she by no means had a canine herself. However she had particular views about anti-cat individuals. In her expertise, she stated, a few of those that claimed they have been allergic to cats typically simply didn’t like them.
“A cat is a free spirit and won’t be subservient,” she wrote in “The Internal Cat” (1978). “Individuals who derive their gratification from giving instructions that others should obey might be threatened by a cat. It’s laborious to claim your sense of energy over a cat.”
