“Cat therapist” Carole Wilbourn, 85, died in Manhattan on Dec. 23. Wilbourn sounded less loony than most pet psychiatrists: “A cat behaves badly when it’s trying to communicate,” she said. “It’s sending an SOS. It’s saying, ‘Please help me.’” (My misbehaving cat Dorothy was usually saying “I weel keel you”—because cats are all psychotic, that’s why we love them). Wilbourn also said, “Cats have emotions. They get happy and sad and frustrated, and, since I understand emotions in people, I understand them in cats.” OK, that sounds not totally crazy (though she did use reiki energy healing on them, which is totally crazy). Wilbourn was a substitute teacher and a Playboy bunny when she and her husband opened a cat hospital in 1973. Her NY Times obit name-checks her patients Snoopy, “who didn’t like to be held and played rough when he was, and ran around in circles if he was over-excited” (Snoopy and I have a lot in common), and Minina, who “bit all visitors, and had to be locked away during dinner parties” (again, Minina, c’est moi). Wilbourn seemed to admit that she was in the right profession in the right place: “If I lived anywhere besides a big city like New York, I’d be on food stamps.”
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