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Animal Hoarding:
When
guardians lose their grip on reality, animals pay a horrific
price
By
Carreen
Maloney
Ten years ago, Dr. Kimberly Barron found herself in the throes
of a sickening situation that no veterinarian would envy. A
friend had just purchased a house dirt cheap from an 80-year-old
woman, but in the process, he had also inherited its contents:
175 feral cats who were locked inside. The house had become so
uninhabitable that even the animal hoarder who sold it to him
had moved out years earlier. She swung by just once a week to
drop off two 40-pound bags of kibble and some buckets of water
for the cats.
Barron was shocked and repulsed by what she witnessed when she
pushed open the door. The floors and surfaces were caked with
feces and urine. Mold was rampant. Animals had started feeding
on each other. The stench of ammonia was excruciating, and
burned Barron’s lungs and throat. “We’d open up a cupboard and
find a dead cat,” says Barron, owner of Northshore Veterinary
Hospital in Bellingham, Washington.
The young veterinarian immediately realized that the surviving
cats, all long-haired brown tabbies, were deathly ill. They were
wheezing from untreated upper respiratory disease. Some couldn’t
move all four limbs. Many suffered from glaucoma, a painful eye
disease that causes blindness.
“Their eyes were oozing and bulging out of their heads,” Barron
recalls. “Their fur was so badly matted that the hair had broken
off at the skin. The mats were folded back and trailed after the
cats like another cat.”
When the local animal welfare organization inexplicably refused
to assist, Barron’s heart sunk. She had nowhere else to turn.
She knew what she had to do; there was only one humane option.
She had the medical skills to put the cats out of their misery.
She reached deep inside herself to find courage and resolve.
Until now, she’s never spoken about it.
“It stained my soul,” says Barron, her voice heavy with the pain
of recollection.
The mission took two nights. She and two men – the new homeowner
and his friend – donned masks and gloves and staged a massive
rescue operation after dark that ended the suffering of nearly
170 cats. The cats were feral, which means untamed to human
touch. Calm and quietly competent by nature, Barron worked each
room slowly but deliberately, being careful not to frighten the
animals unnecessarily. The men, both fishermen by trade, netted
the cats and brought them to her one by one so she could take
their lives humanely and compassionately. Six of the cats were
well enough to be spared, and they were adopted together to live
out the remainder of their days as barn cats.
“I had a hard time sleeping, and nightmares after that,” Barron
says. “It was a needless massacre and I felt really bad about
it. It was such a waste of life. I still feel so badly for those
cats. Here they lived these awful lives, and the last thing they
see is three people coming in at night to take their lives.”
The sinister display of animal hoarding that Barron encountered
firsthand isn’t rare. It’s covertly occurring behind closed
doors in communities around the nation. Thousands of hoarding
houses are busted every year, each with its own gory hallmarks,
and scores more languish undetected. When the houses are raided,
newspaper and television reports splash the stories all over the
headlines, grisly tales of hellholes imprisoning 10, dozens,
hundreds, even 1,000 animals, all suffering from severe neglect
– sick, emaciated, dehydrated, and riddled with parasites. If
the hoarder hasn’t confined them to wither away in cages, they
burrow into walls, mattresses and chesterfields seeking refuge,
desperate to escape overcrowding and inevitable cannibalism
Animal hoarding is a complex mental disorder characterized by
people who actively or passively accumulate large numbers of
animals, and then fail to provide the minimum standards of
sanitation, space, nutrition and veterinary care for them.
Sometimes hoarders collect a medley of creatures, but more often
than not they are species-specific. Even exotic animals and
livestock don’t escape the inhumanity. Madeline Bernstein,
president of SPCA Los Angeles, mentions one case in which the
hoarder, a female mental health therapist, was keeping 300-pound
pigs – 55 of them – in a 1,200-square-foot house without
utilities.
Hoarders usually enclose their animals in a house, mobile home,
outbuilding or vehicle, allowing conditions to deteriorate until
circumstances become deplorable for the animals and themselves,
seeming not to mind or even notice. If it becomes absolutely
unbearable, the hoarder might move out, perhaps even to an
outbuilding on the property. Before she staged her rescue
mission, Barron spoke with the elderly hoarder who had
previously owned the home. “She wanted the cats to live there.
She thought this was the life they were supposed to live. This
lady was unplugged.”
In fact, when confronted by authorities or friends and family,
hoarders vehemently deny there is a problem, or attempt to
justify any problems they do admit to.
“They’ll say I got there too early [to inspect the premises],
they didn’t have a chance to clean yet,” Bernstein says.
Hoarders hardly ever turn themselves in, are resistant to
intervention, and are typically exposed by neighbors who can’t
stand the stench or noise emanating from the house any longer,
or landlords who evict them from the premises for damages.
“Hoarders will start calling in [to the shelter] after a big
bust hoping to get more animals,” says Bernstein, a former New
York prosecutor. “I don’t feel any sympathy for them. They say
no one loves the animals like they do, and yet the animals are
emaciated.”
Of all the graphic images animal cruelty investigators and
rescuers must contend with witnessing and processing during
their careers, animal hoarding cases are among the most
distressing. The responders interviewed for this story said the
gruesome sights and smells are indelibly burned into their
memory banks.
Barron still carries guilt and pain over what happened in the
house with the brown tabby cats. She’s since served on the board
of the Whatcom Humane Society (WHS), the same agency that
refused to help her a decade ago. Times have changed; WHS
started actively investigating hoarding houses when executive
director Penny Cistaro took over the helm eight years ago. In
the past year, WHS cruelty officers have staged rescues in two
of them, one with 40 cats and the other with 53, says Cistaro.
“Hoarders don’t see the suffering,” she says. “They think the
animals are okay.”
Cistaro, whose 34-year career in animal sheltering spans
multiple states, has been involved in dozens of hoarding cases.
She never gets used to it. After euthanizing most of the animals
in the 40-cat house WHS descended on recently, she called a
colleague back East to talk out her guilt and anguish.
The root origins of hoarding are still shrouded in mystery.
Because hoarders are secretive, distrustful of authority
figures, and tend to grow increasingly isolated from society as
their conditions worsen, they are challenging to study and
interview. Intellectual study of the pathology of animal
hoarding is still relatively new. In 1997, an interdisciplinary
research group called the Hoarding of Animals Research
Consortium (HARC) was formed in Massachusetts. Based out of the
Center for Animals and Public Policy at the Cummings School of
Veterinary Medicine at Tufts, its purpose is to study animal
hoarding, and to educate health professionals, government
agencies and the general public about its wide-reaching
implications.
While hoarders come in all ages, economics and genders, the
stereotype of the “little old cat lady” isn’t so far off the
mark. A 1999 study conducted by Dr. Gary Patronek, HARC’s
founder and a leader in the field, examined the case files on 54
animal hoarders. His research showed that three quarters were
female. Half were 60 years and older, and another 37 percent
were between 59 and 40. Almost three quarters were single,
divorced or widowed, and more than half lived alone. Many were
retired, unemployed or receiving disability payments. Still,
there are unusual exceptions. Some hoarders hold down jobs and
interact almost seamlessly with society. Hoarders have even been
discovered working in fields such as nursing and veterinary
medicine.
Each hoarder is a unique product of his or her background,
motivations, and triggers that lead to a manifestation of the
disorder, but one theme is universal: a professed love of
animals to a point of zealous obsession. In the 40-cat case
Cistaro refers to, the female hoarder in her 50s was admitted to
the hospital on suicide watch after the animals were seized.
Mental health experts have suggested that traumatic or
neglectful childhoods culminating in bonding and attachment
issues might cause hoarders to be unsocial with human beings,
leading them to crave the unconditional, unquestioning and
nonjudgmental love that animals provide. For the hoarder, that
transforms a home full of captive animals that most people would
view as a den of despair into a protected haven of safety and
love that only they control.
“They can build their own fantasy world,” says Dave Pauli, a
Humane Society of United States national project director. Pauli
has investigated and cleaned up more than 100 hoarding houses.
“They are in pure denial.”
The lure of a hoarder’s collection is powerful – the rate of
recidivism is nearly 100 percent.
“I’ve never seen them get well. If they’re fighting the
intervention, they just move,” Bernstein says. She talks about
hoarders who are currently causing havoc in the ritzy Los
Angeles district of Pacific Palisades. The 90-year-old twin
sisters hoarded cats and dogs for decades, but those animals
have since died.
“People remember the stench from the ‘60s. The sisters are quite
famous,” says Bernstein, adding that now they’ve started feeding
rats. “The whole neighborhood is overrun by thousands of street
rats. We need to find a Pied Piper.”
A variety of mental illnesses and personality disorders seem to
be driving factors that set the hoarding behavior on an
out-of-control course. Psychologists and psychiatrists have
cited a litany of mental problems that have been identified
among hoarders, a list so long that the presence of a mental
illness might carry more significance in explaining the hoarding
onset than the type of illness itself. Combined with an
unfortunate change of circumstances such as the hoarder’s
deteriorating health, death or illness of a spouse, or
unemployment, the situation ripens to spin out of control.
“Before they realize they have a problem, it all comes crashing
down on them,” says James Spain, a WHS animal cruelty
investigator.
Hoarders have a ready source of animals to feed their addiction.
Many pose as animal rescuers, sanctuaries and hospice shelters,
and citizens seeking a “no kill” solution for their discarded
family pets readily dump their unwanted animals on hoarders
without bothering to check references or conduct site visits.
While people need to be aware of the existence of hoarders
seeking animals, a distinction must be made from legitimate
animal welfare groups, and there are many both large and small,
who put the needs of animals first.
Hoarders fear death and believe that euthanasia is wrong under
any circumstances, even when an animal is suffering. In their
minds, preservation of life takes precedence over quality of
life, and they fervently believe their animal collection is
better off barely alive in their care than facing humane death
at a shelter. There is some evidence to suggest that some
hoarders might have started out with well-meaning intentions in
the past and might even have adopted animals out at some point
in their history. HARC recognizes one type of hoarder as the
most menacing: exploiter hoarders. These sociopaths have no
empathy for living beings, and are charismatic, cunning and
manipulative. They use their superficial charms to elevate their
status in society, striving to be admired as sainted figures. To
complicate matters, the act of “saving” is woven into the
self-esteems of hoarders, and their portrait of themselves as
heroes and martyrs is reinforced every time they take in another
animal.
“They believe nobody can take care of the animals as well as
they can, that no one is as big and powerful as they are in the
community,” Barron says. “It’s tied to their self-esteem. It’s a
sense of empowerment.”
Animal welfare organizations have historically shouldered the
brunt of the significant effort required to close down a
hoarding house, including pursuing the rescue of the animals and
the cruelty prosecutions. These cases take a financial and
emotional toll.
“Most law enforcement agencies will run from cases like this,”
Pauli says.
The owner almost always resists assistance, so a case must first
be built against the hoarder to secure the authority required to
seize the neglected animals. Hoarders can be media savvy,
villianizing the responding animal welfare agency by using the
potential euthanasia of the animals to twist public perception
and gain sympathy for their view that any shred of life is
better than death.
“They are often smart, resourceful, good communicators – they
come across as knowledgeable,” Pauli says.
Once proper authority is secured, the monstrous task begins.
Besides the heartbreaking task of euthanizing the bulk of the
animals, frequently an unavoidable conclusion, a hoarding house
is a disaster zone dangerous to human health. Levels of ammonia
are hazardous. The houses are loaded with rats and parasites.
Responders must wear hazardous material clothing and masks, and
ensure they have enough animal handling gear and euthanasia
drugs on hand. Depending on the number of animals involved,
outside veterinarians and rescuers might have to be called in to
help. Cruelty investigators must diligently log evidence, and
take photographs and videos to document neglect so the case has
enough evidence to travel through the legal system. And judges
and prosecutors need to be educated about animal hoarding. A
profound misunderstanding of the disorder frustrates legal
consequences, and results in beliefs that hoarders shouldn’t be
prosecuted because they are well-meaning but misguided.
The prosecution of hoarders for animal cruelty is hindered by
two significant roadblocks, one motivated by money and the other
by humanity. The cost to a shelter of caring for the seized
animals during a protracted court case is prohibitive. With the
exception of money-losing animal control contracts, shelters
receive no government funding and must rely entirely on private
donations. Cistaro, who used to work at Peninsula Humane Society
in San Mateo, California, talks about one case involving 140
goats. Seizing and caring for the goats and pursuing the cruelty
case cost the shelter half a million dollars. Along with money,
the inhumanity of keeping desperately ill animals confined in
cages for months while awaiting the disposition of a trial is a
major deterrent. A bargain is often struck: forfeit custody of
the animals and escape criminal charges.
Carreen Maloney has been a writer and animal rescuer for
20 years. She runs Fuzzy Town, a toy and pet products company.
She can be reached at
carreen@fuzzytown.com.
What Can Citizens Do About Animal Hoarding?
If you have a neighbor, friend or family member you suspect is
an animal hoarder, please consider taking action. Often people
don’t report suspicious activity because they fear reprisals.
Your courage in coming forward could prevent inexorable
suffering of animals. Please note these are general tips
provided for a complex situation. The Hoarding of Animals
Research Consortium is an excellent resource with a multitude of
well-researched articles about animal hoarding topics (www.tufts.edu/vet/cfa/hoarding).
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If you suspect animals are being kept in cruel or neglectful
conditions, notify your local animal shelter or animal
welfare authority immediately. For Orleans Parish, the
Louisiana SPCA has jurisdiction. Strong smells of urine,
endless barking or persistent cat fighting could all signify
hoarding activity.
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Citizens dumping unwanted pets must educate themselves and
others about hoarders. Investigate before you turn your
animal over to an unknown entity, and insist on a site
visit. Ask about animal care and adoptions.
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If you know an incipient or budding hoarder on the brink of
disaster, help make sure all his or her animals are spayed
and neutered, even if this means transporting the animals to
the veterinarian and paying for it yourself. Your act of
kindness and generosity will save many animals being born
into an insufferable situation.
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Offer specific assistance such as helping with cleaning and
garbage removal to improve sanitation for the animals.
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Ensure monetary help you offer isn’t just freeing up
finances for the hoarder to acquire more animals.
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Read all the information you can dig up about the mentality
behind animal hoarding. Each hoarder’s situation is unique,
and becoming versed in this puzzling illness will help you
figure out the hoarder’s motivations. You can potentially
make a contribution towards managing the problem.
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Marching in and taking charge of the situation may make
hoarders, who typically have control issues, feel threatened
and uncomfortable. The animal hoarder’s home is a safe haven
for her, so use friendly tones and language and try to
connect with him or her in positive ways, such as commenting
on special characteristics of the animals.
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Recruit other family members, friends or experts in social
agencies who might be willing to help, either with the
hoarder’s mental and physical health, or as a resource to
you. Particularly helpful are other animal lovers who
understand the challenges associated with caring for
animals, or those with interpersonal skills, knowledge or
experience related to the situation. Proceed slowly if
introducing someone new to the hoarder unless the situation
is dire and the intervention of authorities is required to
save the animals and the hoarder from danger.
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