Thanks you guys! And thank you especially to Sam for starting this thread. There was a mountain of information about this syndrome/disease or malady. It was impossible to plow through without taking up pages and pages of this website, so I went for the personal look using someone's testimony about living through the horror of it.
O.T. I just wanted to mention this...
Last week I watched a program on the Animal Planet channel which was about the SPCA in Detroit. In the program, the SPCA had to remove cats from an animal hoarder's house, and the program did a good job of showing what the conditions inside the house were like. They finally ended up with a total of something like 250 cats that had lived in the house but hadn't ever had any human contact. EVERY SINGLE ONE of these cats was humanely put down!!!
The explaination given was that the cats were so feral they could never be rehomed.
Right, I saw that one, the woman hadn't touched one of those cats in years, so finding homes for 250 wild cats is a bit daunting. In that type of situation, the kindest thing for these cats was to be released from their terror.
OMG!!!! I just read it, Hissy!!! And it brought tears to my eyes!!!!!! I recognized who your story was about......my heart goes out to the people who have to deal with the pain of a relative who is a hoarder.