Carole Wilbourn, who put cats on the couch, dies at 84

Carole Wilbourn, a self-proclaimed cat therapist known for her ability to decipher the emotional lives of cats, however confusing it may seem, died on December 23 at her home in Manhattan. She was 84 years ancient.

Her death was confirmed by her sister Gail Mutrux.

Mrs. Wilbourn’s patients destroyed sofas, toilet paper and romantic partners. They soiled the carpets and beds. In the early hours they galloped over sleeping people. They hissed at children, dogs and other cats. They chewed on electrical wires. They sulked in closets and went on hunger strike.

They suffered from childhood trauma, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, jealousy and plain rage. And Mrs. Wilbourn, who was self-taught – she studied (human) psychology in college and majored in education – seemed especially attuned to the inner workings of their furry minds. A minor star of Manhattan, she was often called Freud the Cat or the mother of cat psychiatry.

She often noticed that cats hate change. Even a fresh cover on the sofa can solve them. Cats are selfish. Unlike dogs, which try to please their master, cats try to please themselves. To break the stereotype: elated cat, elated (human) life.

“The cat is behaving badly trying to communicate,” she told The Los Angeles Daily News in 1990. “It’s sending an SOS signal. He says, “Please assist me.”

Ms. Wilbourn developed her specialty more than half a century after founding The Cat Practice, known as Manhattan’s first cat-only hospital, in 1973 under the direction of veterinarian Paul Rowan. She said she was the first cat therapist in the country, a claim that was not disputed.

She was the author of six books, including Cats on the Couch (first published in 1982), which included case studies to assist cat lovers better understand their furry friends. She has treated patients as far as Australia and Turkey (by phone) and made home calls as far away as Maui.

“Cats have emotions,” she said. “They get elated, melancholy and frustrated, and because I understand emotions in humans, I understand them in cats, too.”

She estimated that she had treated approximately 13,000 cats and achieved a success rate of 75–80%. Take Snoopy, for example, who didn’t like being held or played roughly, and would run around if he got overly excited. Sobriety, a 3-year-old tabby cat, scratched her skin painfully. Minina bit all the guests and had to be locked up during parties. Mrs. Wilbourn’s diagnosis? One cat syndrome. Treatment? Another cat, preferably a kitten; a lot of attention, but not to the kitten; and, in the case of Sobriety, Valium.

She once treated a cat with Reiki energy after it accidentally ran it through a dryer.

Ms. Wilbourn also frequently prescribed Fresh Age and classical music, recordings of whale songs, and lots of treats such as catnip (she emphasized that it was a natural antidepressant). She also suggested clever modifications to people’s behavior, such as having a fresh romantic partner feed the cat. In the days of landlines and answering machines, she often recommended that people call their pets and leave them elated messages. Her services weren’t budget-friendly. House calls in Manhattan hovered around $400.

“If I lived anywhere but a substantial city like Fresh York,” she told The Fresh York Times in 2004, “I would be on food stamps.”

Carole Cecile Engel was born on March 19, 1940, in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens, one of four children of Harriet (Greenwald) and Gustave Engel, a taxi driver. There were no cats in their Queens apartment, but the family had a canary named Petey. Carole graduated from Bayside High School and attended the School of Education at Albany State University, then transferred to Fresh York University, where she studied psychology and received a bachelor’s degree in business education in 1964.

Her first cat was a Siamese cat named Oliver, which she adopted through an ad in The Village Voice. Before opening The Cat Practice with Dr. Rowan, whom she later married, she worked as a substitute teacher and a Playboy bunny.

“She was very sensitive to animals, to their emotional states,” Dr. Rowan said in an interview. “It was very unusual for the time.” As a result, their business flourished.

Her previous marriage to photographer David Wilbourn ended in divorce, as did her marriage to Dr. Rowan. In addition to Ms. Mutrux, her sister, she is survived by Orion 2, a Siamese.

Mrs. Wilbourn was also a dog lover and sometimes treated dogs, although she had never owned a dog herself. However, she had mighty views about people being anti-cat. In her experience, some people who claim to be allergic to cats often simply didn’t like them.

“The cat is a free spirit and will not be subordinated to it,” she wrote in “The Inner Cat” (1978). “People who derive satisfaction from giving orders that others must follow may be threatened by a cat. It’s tough to assert your sense of power over a cat.”