Inside an animal hoarder's house
Posted: Thursday, March 13, 2008 4:32 PM by Sarika Dani
(From Josh Weiner, TODAY producer)
Do you like cats? How many do you consider too many to keep as pets?
Imagine being inside a tiny house with over 100 cats. Talk about an unforgettable experience. It was a recent assignment for a segment on animal hoarding where I found myself inside a cat-cramped, tiny home just outside Manhattan.
It was a bitterly cold Friday morning just after sunrise. My colleague Melanie Jackson came along to help film, and we first met the ASPCA folks outside. Their team was ready to go with two mobile surgical trucks. The goal: to spay and neuter all the cats in the house within just one day. Because this case wasn’t wasn't deemed one of animal abuse, this was the way to at least prevent further breeding. A perfect solution? Perhaps not, but it was the best option.
You can't even imagine the stench walking into the home. Absolutely horrendous. Big, small, running wild, hiding in the kitchen cabinets, the bedroom mattress, behind the refrigerator ... cats were everywhere!
Everywhere, including my head. Melanie and I were in the midst of shooting when all of a sudden a cat landed on me.
The ASPCA team was in full gear – professional, comfortable, and whoa were they fast! Within less than 30 minutes, they had captured most of the cats and put them in carrying cases.
I followed around filming – and between the 100 cats and the half-dozen ASPCA folks, this place was chaos. A few confused-looking neighbors passed by the house on their way to work, clearly trying to figure out what the ruckus was all about. It was, after all, just 6:30 AM on a Friday.
I didn’t spend the whole day there. But the ASPCA did. And they were able to perform surgery on all the cats. They returned all of the cats to the home, except for about 40 kittens which they took back to their shelter – hoping that they would find adoptive families.
But there's a tragic paradox to this story. At first glance, one might think that only a sick, malicious person would hoard over 100 cats and keep them locked up inside. After speaking with the owner (or perhaps the "keeper" is a more accurate title), I felt very sympathetic.
This woman, who agreed to speak as long as her anonymity was protected, was really upset and seemingly misguided. Three years ago, she explained, her dog died, and she began to rescue cats from the street. They kept mating ... and mating ... and mating ... all the while she continued to gather more neighborhood cats. Soon it was totally out of control.
The hoarder welcomed the ASPCA, because ultimately this woman wanted to find permanent homes for the cats. Was she doing a service to the animals? I guess it's debatable. But her intentions were always good.
It was a pretty unnerving experience for me. In the end, I think our story about hoarding will help bring attention to the problem, so that animal hoarding cases are reported to authorities before they're completely out of hand.
For more on the psychology behind animal hoarding: The crazy cat lady, explained
