It seems like every few months there is a story on the local news about a house that is completely filled with animals. The story usually goes like this: A foul odor was reported from neighbors and animal control was called in to investigate. Upon further investigation, the house was home to more than “X” number of animals.
The cats and or dogs are then put into cages and hauled off to an animal shelter. Many of the animals are diseased, malnourished, and unfortunately euthanized. This is a peculiar form of hoarding that accounts for roughly 1,500 cases per year.
Hoarding is a type of obsessive compulsive disorder that takes hold of people’s lives. Hoarders want to hold on to just about everything they come in contact with. Animal hoarders are usually lonely, older individuals that accumulate a large number of animals to protect them from harm. In doing so, the conditions in the home deteriorate over time. This leads to a very unhealthy environment for the animals as well as the hoarder. From AnimalHoarding.com:
Hoarders justify their behavior with the view that the animals are surrogate children and that no one else can care for them. They harbor a fear that if they seek help the animals will be euthanized.
More recently, in a publication from the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium, Animal Hoarding: Structuring interdisciplinary responses to help people, animals and communities at risk, Patronek and his cohorts list four key characteristics:
- Failure to provide minimal standards of sanitation, space, nutrition, and veterinary care for the animals
- Inability to recognize the effects of this failure on the welfare of the animals, human members of the household, and the environment
- Obsessive attempts to accumulate or maintain a collection of animals in the face of progressively deteriorating conditions
- Denial or minimization of problems and living conditions for people and animals
For more information on hoarding in general, check out these resources: