{"id":19608,"date":"2025-01-08T21:28:49","date_gmt":"2025-01-08T22:28:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=19608"},"modified":"2025-01-08T23:24:41","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T23:24:41","slug":"carole-wilbourn-who-put-cats-on-the-couch-dies-at-84","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=19608","title":{"rendered":"Carole Wilbourn, Who Put Cats on the Couch, Dies at 84"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When cats bite or scratch, they\u2019re trying to tell you something. Wilbourn, a cat therapist, was a pioneer in the art of listening to them.<\/p>\n

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Carole Wilbourn, a self-described cat therapist, who was known for her skill in decoding the emotional life of cats, as confounding as that would seem to be, died on Dec. 23 at her home in Manhattan. She was 84.<\/p>\n

Her death was confirmed by her sister Gail Mutrux. <\/p>\n

Ms. Wilbourn\u2019s patients shredded sofas, toilet paper and romantic partners. They soiled rugs and beds. They galloped over their sleeping humans in the wee hours. They hissed at babies, dogs and other cats. They chewed electrical wires. They sulked in closets, and went on hunger strikes.<\/p>\n

They suffered from childhood trauma, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, jealousy and just plain rage. And Ms. Wilbourn, who was self-taught \u2014 in college she had studied (human) psychology and majored in education \u2014 seemed particularly attuned to the inner workings of their furry minds. A minor Manhattan celebrity, she was often called the kitty Freud, or the mother of cat psychiatry.<\/p>\n

Cats hate change, she often noted. Even a new slipcover on the sofa can undo them. Cats are selfish. Unlike dogs, who strive to please their master, a cat strives to please itself. To mangle a clich\u00e9, happy cat, happy (human) life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cA cat behaves badly when it\u2019s trying to communicate,\u201d she told The Los Angeles Daily News in 1990. \u201cIt\u2019s sending an SOS. It\u2019s saying, \u2018Please help me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Wilbourn developed her specialty over a half-century after founding The Cat Practice, billed as Manhattan\u2019s first cats-only hospital, in 1973 with Paul Rowan, a veterinarian. She said she was the first feline therapist in the country, a claim that is not known to have been disputed.<\/p>\n

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When cats bite or scratch, they\u2019re trying to tell you something. Wilbourn, a cat therapist, was a pioneer in the art of listening to them.Carole Wilbourn, a self-described cat therapist, who was known for her skill in decoding the emotional life of cats, as confounding as that would seem to be, died on Dec. 23 at her home in Manhattan. She was 84.Her death was confirmed by her sister Gail Mutrux. Ms. Wilbourn\u2019s patients shredded sofas, toilet paper and romantic partners. They soiled rugs and beds. They galloped over their sleeping humans in the wee hours. They hissed at babies, dogs and other cats. They chewed electrical wires. They sulked in closets, and went on hunger strikes.They suffered from childhood trauma, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, jealousy and just plain rage. And Ms. Wilbourn, who was self-taught \u2014 in college she had studied (human) psychology and majored in education \u2014 seemed particularly attuned to the inner workings of their furry minds. A minor Manhattan celebrity, she was often called the kitty Freud, or the mother of cat psychiatry.Cats hate change, she often noted. Even a new slipcover on the sofa can undo them. Cats are selfish. Unlike dogs, who strive to please their master, a cat strives to please itself. To mangle a clich\u00e9, happy cat, happy (human) life.\u201cA cat behaves badly when it\u2019s trying to communicate,\u201d she told The Los Angeles Daily News in 1990. \u201cIt\u2019s sending an SOS. It\u2019s saying, \u2018Please help me.\u2019\u201dMs. Wilbourn developed her specialty over a half-century after founding The Cat Practice, billed as Manhattan\u2019s first cats-only hospital, in 1973 with Paul Rowan, a veterinarian. She said she was the first feline therapist in the country, a claim that is not known to have been disputed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19610,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19608"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19611,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19608\/revisions\/19611"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}