NEED TO KNOW
There’s been another turn in the fate of Wendy Williams’ two cats.
A lawsuit filed by Williams’ ex-husband Kevin Hunter — which he claims is on her behalf — on Tuesday, June 17, claims that Williams’ guardian Sabrina Morrissey “sold” the former talk show host’s “beloved, rescued cats” Chit Chat and My Way without her “knowledge,” thus “isolating” her from “much-needed companionship and emotional support.”
The lawsuit also alleges that Morrissey “breached her fiduciary duty” to Williams “by refusing to continue paying for the boarding fees” for the two cats and “subsequently selling” them. Williams, 60, has been under a legal guardianship that oversees both her finances and her health since 2022 and has been living in a N.Y.C. assisted-living facility since 2023.
Williams previously said during an interview on The Breakfast Club radio show in January that Morrissey had told her that her cats — whom she rescued in 2019 — were “gone.”
“I said, ‘You mean they are gone gone gone gone gone?’” she recalled. “Chit Chat and My Way, my twin cats, they’re gone.”
Questions about the cats’ whereabouts first arose after they were featured in the shocking Lifetime documentary Where Is Wendy Williams?
Morrissey has not responded to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
The lawsuit names 48 defendants — including Morrissey, the judge presiding over the guardianship Lisa Sokoloff, Wells Fargo and others — who she claims have violated her constitutional rights.
While the lawsuit claims Williams is not seeking an end to the guardianship, Hunter is requesting a “new impartial guardian,” the unsealing of her case files, her release from “involuntary confinement” and $250 million in relief for “financial loss, reputational damage, emotional distress, reputational harm, legal expense and deprivation of liberty.”
Hunter alleges Williams “has been the victim of unrestrained abuse, maltreatment, and fiscal malfeasance” in the three years since her guardianship was first imposed due to her dementia diagnosis (which she has since contested.)
Hunter further claims that his ex-wife “was not afforded an independent medical evaluation” before being placed under a guardianship and has since been “subjected to overmedication and undue restrictions.”
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However, LaShawn Thomas, the attorney who filed the lawsuit, acknowledges in statement to PEOPLE that Williams is “not legally aware of all of the evidence that supports our claims that she should not be forced to suffer from this guardianship.”
“I plan on laying out sufficient evidence to support our claims and ensure that her rights are vindicated and she is made whole financially,” the statement continued.
PEOPLE has also reached out to Hunter, Sokoloff, Schiller and the assisted care living facility for comment while Wells Fargo declined to comment.