Animal Hoarders

When I was spending a lot of time hanging out in the oncology department of the University of Pennsylvania small animal hospital gathering material for my article on pets with cancer, I remember meeting a client whom the staff referred to as a "collector." Simply put, this meant that the woman had well over 100 cats. She showed me photographs of the elaborate habit-trail type enclosures someone had built for her menagerie and although I marveled at how she ever managed to feed 100 cats, let alone keep them straight and dole out medicine to the right one, the staff knew her well enough to know that she did a remarkable job of managing her "collection."

Apparently this is not always the case as a recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. A husband and wife from South Jersey were released on $25,000 bail earlier this week after they were arrested and charged in the deaths of dozens of pets found in their home. Apparently the house was up for foreclosure and when the locksmith arrived to change the locks, he couldn't believe the sight and smell of the interior of the home. I will spare you the details but suffice it to say that nothing was alive inside the home except for the flies and maggots that were attracted to the decomposing remains of 64 animals.

This seems to be the all too typical end for "collectors" or "hoarders" who start out rescuing animals with the best of intentions, only to find that the numbers eventually do them in. The Humane Society of the United States has had quite a lot of experience with these types of cases and, according to Randall Lockwood, vice president for Research and Educational Outreach,"Hoarding is very often a symptom of a greater mental illness, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder."

The problem is often difficult to detect because "collectors" appear to lead normal lives, but the HSUS warns that it is important to recognize when a person's infatuation with animals has reached a dangerous stage. Some key characteristics to look for are the "hoarders denial of his/her ability to care for the animals and his/her failure to grasp the impact his/her neglect has one the animals, the household and the human occupants of the dwelling."

Of course all of this is even more difficult to detect when the collector lives alone or with a relative. Take the case of the Massachusetts woman who had 488 cats, 222 of them dead, and the rest so wild they had to be euthanized, when she was discovered by the authorities. The eighty two year old woman lived with her daughter.

And lest you think this only happens to little old ladies, Gary Patronek, a veterinarian who teaches at Tufts Vet School has had "cases of white-collar professionals leading double lives, even health care providers or veterinarians who are going to work every day, advising people on proper health and going home" to an out of control menagerie.

So the bottom line to animal lovers is to control your personal collection of pets and keep your eyes open for situations in which the animals outnumber the humans by far too many. And if you think you've uncovered an example in your neck of the woods, by all means notify the proper authorities.

You are doing both the pets and the collector a service by rescuing all of them.