Article: Too Many Cats: A Portrait of an Animal Hoarder

http://cats.suite101.com/article.cfm...animal-hoarder
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Mr. Collins* is an 85-year-old, retired postal employee and a WWII veteran. He lives in a small apartment in a small village in southwest Ohio. He is married with one daughter and two grandchildren. Oddly, his wife Jodie* is living on the second floor of the apartment building while he stays on the first floor. Whatâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s the reason for this strange arrangement? Jodie moved out when her husband started taking in stray cats since 2005. It all started when he found a cardboard box containing a cat with a litter of four kittens outside his front door. He lives in an old neighborhood where people are struggling to put food on the table. And sometimes, having a cat is just another mouth to feed. Some couldnâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t even afford to take their own animals to the vet. Although he already has a dog, Mr. Collins took in the young family into his humble home. For some reason, word got around that this kind elderly man was taking in stray cats. Soon enough, he was finding more and more cats and kittens left on his front step. He couldnâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t bear to turn them away. Once he started feeding them, they just invited themselves into his one bedroom apartment and never checked out.

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My husband and I have 8 we're caring for - two of which are "special needs" ... we see so many that need help and it's so difficult to turn them away.

A link in the article: http://www.tufts.edu/vet/hoarding/index.html

I had to cease fostering due to having 10 in my household. I'm inclined to foster the kitties no one else will adopt, the special needs/"unadoptable" ones. And well, they don't get adopted. I'm at my limit space wise & financially - so no more here, no matter how needy.

So sad, I have been in a house with about a dozen cats and it was ruined...not normal cat mess from a day. Poop all over, none fixed, ants in dishes. I hate when cities try to limit the number as its not really enforced and IMO targets more of the responsible but higher number households. That one house I was in even if spay/neuter was free they never would have went through the "trouble" to fast cat and bring it in.

I currently have over twenty strays living with me. Some have special needs, and except for the upstairs litter box room, my home doesn't hold a bad smell. I don't have a messy home- it does gets cluttered and I clean it up. You can walk easily throughout the house- except you might step on the dog or tread on a cat's tail. They have an outside enclosure that allows them plenty of room to run and play and it is attached to our home. I've wondered several times if I am a hoarder, but my cats are vetted and healthy although a recent episode with feline distemper has caused me to back completely out of rescue because my home isn't safe for kittens who are already health-compromised. I bleached my home backwards and forwards two years ago when distemper hit- but it didn't matter. The virus is persistent and recently claimed more kittens.

I am not a hoarder, just someone with a caring heart who cares for those living in the shadows.

My large household came from feral cats, most of which were unadoptable and others were just those orphaned babies that wormed their ways into our hearts.

It's hard to draw the line sometimes when you have a big heart, but if you don't have the resources to care for them, you MUST draw the line. I think the ability to recognize when to do so separates hoarders from others.

Like Nat, I've stopped taking in new babies for this reason. My reasons were not financial, but for the ability to manage the stress between cats in a large household. I have 2 with auto-immune diseases that don't get along with each other. It's the effects of the disease that causes them to act out, and that emotional stress of not getting along adds to the effects of the disease. The rest get along very well. Having 2 that are antagonistic with each other is all my household can stand.

With 9 cats of our own and currently 8 fosters, I have had many people make a comment or assume I am a hoarder. I would NOT have these animals in my home if I could not properly care for them, and like hissy, my home is clean, no smell, and my babies are cared for better than most KIDS. I have fostered babies with special needs and have been very determined and have managed to rehome them. I know my heart is too big, but I can say no. I had a call from the shelter wanting me to take another foster yesterday and I said no because we are at our capacity for now. Do I fall in love? Absolutely, with every single one, but I know I can't keep them all myself and will always do what is best for the kitty. I know my limits.

When you see the filthy houses most of those people would have a filthy house whether they had any animals or not. Either from inability to clean (health) or just from not doing it. When you combine that with any sort of hoarding it quickly gets out of hand.

Most people with multi cat and dog homes know what a broom and mop is and some are even obsessively clean because we worry that we're going to make our pets sick. Sadly we do get lumped in with the former..

Then there's people like the guy in the article. Elderly well meaning folk that were taught what responsibility was, and unfortunately feel they have to take on that responsibility because no one else steps up. These people need assistance, but most areas either don't have any sort of programs in place or people just don't care.

We have 9 right now, 2 of which we are trying to find homes for. We can't turn away a kitty in need, but are having to now. I work from home, I clean cat messes daily and make sure our house doesn't smell like cat, or look like we have so many. Unfortunately, we can't take any more in. We are unable to financially care for any additional cats. After we get the two strays spayed and hopefully adopted out, we may be able to help any more that we find but for now, we can't. We do have a stray that is IDENTICAL to our neighbors indoor/outdoor cat, which leads me to believe their cat is not fixed. This stray apparently knows we are softies when it comes to animals, as when he is hungry, he meows at our door and we give him a plate of food and some water.

The neighbors cat has also recently been coming over for food. We couldn't figure out why, as we had previously thought they took decent care of him, he looked well fed etc....until last week one day we see this poor kitty crying outside the neighbors door. Crying and jumping on the door for awhile. Finally, he was basically halfway up the door, claws stuck in the screen, crying to come in (it was HOT) and they came to the door, knocked him off the door and yelled at him. We were so freakin sad. We put out some extra water and food on our shaded porch and called him over. (their cat has a collar so we can tell which is stray and which is owned)

If we can eventually move to a farmhouse like we want, with some fenced land, we hope to be able to have a large screened porch for kitties, so if we find strays we can care for them easier.