Not all hoarders collect possessions. Some also collect animals.
They are the so-called "cat ladies," usually but not always single women over 40, whose homes are overrun by animals, sometimes hundreds of them. In 1998 authorities in Loudoun County discovered 60 dead cats, some in coffins, along with an equal number of live ones in a one-story house in Sterling. In Los Angeles, officials prosecuted a 60-year-old woman on charges of animal cruelty after they discovered 589 cats--most of them feral--in a feline "rescue mission." And last year a judge in Fairfax County allowed a woman to keep 104 cats in her Annandale town house on the condition that she provide proper care for them.
Cats tend to be the species of choice for animal hoarders, experts say, because they are small, inexpensive, easy to hide and self-sufficient. Other hoarding cases have involved rabbits, mice, raccoons, dogs and even beavers.
The causes and treatment for animal hoarding remain elusive, and reported cases reflect only a tiny fraction of the true prevalence of the problem, experts say.
Gary Patronek, a veterinarian who directs the Center for Animals and Public Policy at Tufts University and is a member of the newly formed Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium in Massachusetts, said that such cases usually come to public attention after neighbors complain to health officials about noise, smell or filth. It is typical for authorities to find dead or diseased animals and unspeakable living conditions when they investigate; sometimes these residences also lack working plumbing, heat or electricity, Patronek said.
"Animal hoarding becomes much more severe much more quickly" than other kinds of hoarding, said psychologist Randy O. Frost of Smith College, a hoarding expert and task force member.
Patronek said some hoarders report that their intense attachment to animals, which many regard as surrogate children, had its roots in their own disordered childhoods.
"Animals were the anchor for people who were growing up with absent, chaotic or unstable parenting," Patronek said. "After all, you don't have a childhood relationship with a pile of newspapers."
Typically, he continued, the hoarder denies that anything is amiss and insists that the animals--usually strays--are being well cared for and have been rescued from a terrible fate.
Social workers say they particularly dread dealing with animal cases. "You just cannot imagine the smell, but they appear to be oblivious to it," said Deborah Warren of the Alexandria Community Services Board. Warren recently handled a case involving a rabbit hoarder. The woman, neat and well-groomed, harbored 50 rabbits, some of them dead and in boxes, in her small condominium in Fairlington Villages.
"Superlatives are meaningless in these cases, because as soon as you see something that you think is the most amazing case you've ever seen, you'll see something even more extraordinary," Patronek observed.
One of the most memorable cases Frost and Patronek encountered involved a Connecticut woman who hoarded beavers. She had 20 of them flown in from Montana because Connecticut law prohibits beaver trapping. Frost, who visited the woman's house, said she ushered him into a dark basement, its floor covered with feces. The beavers, sick and dehydrated, lived there.
Frost said the woman would not permit him to go upstairs to view the rest of the house, which she deemed too messy for visitors. That's where she kept several skunks, their scent glands intact. They repeatedly sprayed several puppies that also lived there and tormented the skunks.
"Her husband said he liked the smell of skunk," Frost told an incredulous audience of 330 social workers and public health officials who attended a recent conference on hoarding held in Fairfax County.
Because there is no effective treatment and many animal hoarders vehemently resist any help, a cycle of hoarding and "dehoarding" is the norm. Once their animals are taken away, many animal hoarders simply start replacing them until they again come to the attention of the legal system.
"The tragedy of these cases," Patronek noted, "is that the primary focus is on rescuing the animals. It's the people who are forgotten."
