We had a man living at the end of my street that might have been considered a hoarder - although all of his cats were well fed while he was alive, they did breed at an astounding rate. Unfortunately the gentleman expired - and since the food he had for the cats was all in cans, they exploited their only remaining food source. The story surfaces now and again in online lists of implausible news.

I can imagine how one person could get that sick if left alone and allowed to. The bit I have trouble imagining is three people, of mixed ages and generations, getting locked together in it.

It's... the suffering for all the humans and animals involved, and for the people cleaning up.

Having lived in some truly filthy dorm rooms, I've noticed that my sense of "clean" adjusts to fit my current surroundings in an alarmingly elastic manner. Rooms that would make my skin crawl if they belonged to someone else fail to register as dirty. It's only when someone comes to visit that I go ZOICKS!! Must clean!!! The mental auto-focus snaps to the twenty-three Snickers wrappers on my desk, the empty toilet paper rolls on the toilet, and the mounds of books all over everything.

All this is by way of saying that I can understand how an old person left to himself (or with a couple of roommates, which—trust me—I know are useless) could come to such a state, especially when you add in a collecting mania and the "I can't toss that when it's still useful" instinct.

You really have to write a book about garbage houses. Your posts about them are just extraordinary. Please, please, please, write a whole book.

Justine

Just guessing, but I suspect that one of the hooks driving animal collecting is the knowledge that there aren't nearly enough homes for existing animals--if you give up the excessive numbers of creatures you've got and/or fail to take in animals off the street, a lot of them will be killed.

Then again, I'm planning a transcontinental move in the coming months, so I have a time frame for Getting Rid Of The Junk (while keeping, of course, the books, and the fabric, and the rocks, and the houseplants, and at least *some* of the food and the clothes and.... er... never mind, I'll just get back to the mound of stuff that I got out from under the bed this week.)

The world is a better place for me not having gone into marketing.

There was a story in the local paper a couple of months back, though, about a woman in NH who quite accidentally found herself responsible for way more cats than she could really handle. She started out by feeding a very hungry stray, and things snowballed from there.

However, she didn't take them all inside, and when she realized she had exceeded her own cat-caring capacity, she called for help. Of course, the key difference between her and true animal hoarders is that she realized she had a capacity limit, that she had passed it, and that she needed to call for help.

You'd think so about saving the cats, but that's sanity talking.

I know of several animal hoarders who considered themselves rescues. (In their own minds.) I knew a legitmate rescue person who got involved with one of them (the hoarder fell ill and was hospitalized). Do you suppose she was happy when the legit rescuer brought news that she'd found homes for some of the pets? Nope. Homicidal rage is more like it.

No one can save the hoarded animals the way the hoarder can. NO ONE. Says the insanity.

These animals aren't really being saved; many of them are being rendered unsaveable through poor nutrition/starvation, lack of socialization, habituation to peeing in the house or fighting for food, or eating their dead fellows, etc. In the dog community, one of the main kinds of hoarders you'll hear about via the grapevine is of toy dog breeds. There's never a lack of homes for these types, even the repeat biters who have no bladder control. But hoarders find them or buy them and tell themselves they're saving them and then pile up the numbers til the animals die. Thereby damning the poor maltese or min pin or yorkie to hell on earth, when the heaven of a apartment dweller in need of a good dog under 20 pounds is only a couple blocks away.

It's depressing.

I'm not saying that real rescue people don't ever subject animals to less than ideal situations for a chance at life; the feral cat spay patrols are a good example of very practical rescue people. Just that hoarders are basically animal abusers; they don't have the animals' interests at heart.

I worry when I see more than four animals per person in a household, unless at least one of the persons involved is a real breeder.

My household currently has seven cats between three people, and they're all in good health, see the vet regularly, and are fed, watered and loved. It's a lot of cats though - and we'd have been badly out of our league if they hadn't arrived over a number of years.

Our worst-case scenario involved 10 cats and two people. At the time, we had three cats, but the household was in the process of splitting, so we'd taken in an abandoned cat that a friend had found in his parking garage.

What we didn't know at the time was that she wasn't just hiding in corners and eating a lot because she'd had to survive on her own, and didn't really trust people or the availability of food... 6 healthy kittens followed - and we were fortunately able to find homes for all of them, but I can understand how that sort of situation could get massively out of hand in a hurry.

Most of the areas that I've lived in have had low-cost or free spay/neuter clinics - although sometimes they're rather hard to find. The vet bill can certainly induce sticker shock otherwise (although I don't begrudge the vet expenses and a living) - and it's easy to see why the insurance companies see a market in pet health insurance (linking back to the health care discusion).

I'd have to go digging - and I'm still trying to pour enough caffeine into my system to type coherently - but I've seen a number of articles about the trend towards treating pets as proto-children, including day care, guilt, shoes, clothes and more. It's an interesting, if somewhat disturbing trend (and reminds me of my college landlords, Ken and Barbie - and their unfortunate golden retriever).

But watch out for the fireman who wants to get rid of them.

I also have more fabric than any sane individual could possibly use in a lifetime, but that's *necessary*. ;)

I also have more fabric than any sane individual could possibly use in a lifetime, but that's *necessary*. ;)

I've gone through a couple of major purges of my fabric stash recently - there's nothing like moving a few times to encourage you to clean up your collection. Happily I know enough fellow addicts that I was able to send everything off to good homes.

Um.

MKK--who also owns more shoes and clothes than she has room for

I've had friends who referred to their home as a "cat farm" or "cat house." Since I'm extremely allergic to cat dander, there are places that I can't be for more than a few minutes. Not that I dislike cats. But I have been hospitalized with pneumothorax and collapsing lung from longer exposure. I'm watching the genetically engineered hypoallergenic cat story with detached interest. I predict lawsuits.

Teresa's writings on the subject weren't decisive for me, but were very helpful in framing the general issue of when collecting may be going awry. For me, book-buying had gone awry.

The first was running out of money (long-term workman's comp injury, insurance company refusing to pay for same) and being forced to sell my home and move in with friends temporarily. A fannish, four-bedroom home I'd been in for six years, reduced to one 8x7x5 storage cube and what I could carry up 3 flights of stairs (and fit into a 2-bedroom apt. already full of stuff). Although it was heart-wrenching at the time to clear out over 2000 of my books (I kept a third of the collection), I have realized that with a few exceptions, I have yet to actually wish for things that were no longer there. Most of the things I long for are things that are currently in storage (and will continue to be, until I find more stable living conditions). While I loved collecting them, and housing them (I'd tipped the balance of books to space and it smelled like a library/bookshop in my house, yay), and reading them... they were not as essential to my happiness as I would have thought. Nor were most of the things I was forced to dispose of.

The second thing that happened was that my grandmother's house was condemned for, among other things, the huge piles of garbage more than 3 feet deep throughout. (The neighbors complained when the roach factory started infesting the entire neighborhood, and the city finally listened when the papers got involved.) She'd had some hoarding behaviors over the years (basement and garage had been packed with stuff for my entire life), but they'd always been at least *clean*. Then, in the past few years, my grandmother's husband and sister died, and the resulting depression and apathy was exacerbated by my aunt's manipulation (possibly chemical) of her and her own habits, and, well, things got out of control. Last I'd heard, they weren't quite sure how to deal with the house; if they demolished it, it would unleash a roach tsunami upon the neighborhood, but repeated extermination efforts were having little to no effect, as every time they'd clear out another layer they'd have to start all over again.

Oh, and there were animals removed and sent to shelters - my aunt never bothered to get her cats spayed or neutered, so there were 3 or 4 of those (most litters were just dumped downtown in boxes for someone else to deal with) in addition to the dog kept in the backyard.

I think that I, personally, will have a difficult time ever collecting much of anything again, out of paranoia as much as desire for space that's as dust-free as possible.

Our little guy has a notched ear because he was a feral the Humane Society picked up and neutered and intended to release back into the wild. (Hence the notched ear, showing he'd already been fixed.) He was instead taken by a local adoption/rescue organization who adopted him out to us.

If someone wants to purge their fabric stash, there may be groups in your area who make quilts for kids who are poor or in the hospital who will gladly take your fabric. That's what I did with my stash when I decided to get rid of most of it.

It's also enforced a lot of discipline on what I buy, because it's easy to say, "I don't need X, because I've got one in New Jersey." I miss my books, but over several trips back east, I've managed to retrieve most of the ones I actually need, as opposed to the ones I'd like to have at hand. Oddly, the thing I miss most regularly is my Zojirushi Neuro-Fuzzy rice cooker, which is buried too deep in the unit to easily retrieve and ship, but is too expensive to justify duplicating.

I've always had a pack-rat streak, especially with regard to keeping shopping bags. In the past, I had bags of bags. Now, I only let myself keep a couple of bags of any given size and immediately consign any new arrivals to the recycling bin before I consider their relative merits in terms of design and durability. (Doing that would cause me to keep them.)

Other things I miss are my big TV. Oddly enough, I rescued an old Sony Trinitron from the street (it had an "I work!" sign on it), which serves my needs. I won't go as far as to say that I've joined the simple living movement, but I do feel a greater sense of freedom with less stuff around.

What is a Zojirushi Neuro-Fuzzy rice cooker? It can't just cook rice. Does it have Bluetooth? Can it talk to you?

I disagree. There are forms of obsessive-compulsive disorder where the form of "hoarding" is manifested in throwing everything out. Everything. My stepmother suffers from this -- or is sufferable, rather. Barely. She buys, obsessively, then throws things out to "make room" for the new things; there is no logic, however. A magazine is bought; a television is thrown out. A new television, mind you. And it is thrown out so no one else could ever use it, because that would somehow upset the delicate balance of the hoarding process that she is sure exists worldwide, because everyone is like that, right?

People who have nothing on their shelves worry me. I learned to look for a good balance of clutter when entering the homes of the elderly when I worked for hospice. Too little is as big a danger sign as too much.

What is a Zojirushi Neuro-Fuzzy rice cooker? It can't just cook rice. Does it have Bluetooth? Can it talk to you?

Presumably one of these.

I still remember being challenged to produce rice without my rice cooker - and profoundly frustrating the challenger by producing perfectly reasonable rice with a pot and water. Posting this has doubtless jinxed me though!

We stopped at nine, though. And tearfully resisted picking up the two humongous granddaddies-of-all-hermit-crabs we saw on Isla Caja de Muertos. Man, those were impressive. But we must still be sane, because we realized that they were impressive because they were still there....

*Eyeing my teetering to-read pile,* Bruce, I think you're on to something here.

That's it all right! It isn't so much that I miss it for white rice, which I can churn out in the microwave pretty easily. It's the porridge and brown rice functions that I miss. My stovetop brown rice always comes out fine on top and pasty on the bottom, and it just doesn't seem right to leave the microwave running for 50 minutes, even if it is on 30% power. Oh, the burdens I must bear!

Have you tried letting the rice soak for 20-30 minutes before cooking it on the stovetop? That sometimes makes the difference. Something else that also helps is making sure that you're simmering, rather than aggressively boiling - but nothing any less than simmering.

Working with an cat rescue group here in the SFBay area, we tend to see at least three to four "area attention" articles related to triple digit hoarding. The ratio of rescuer mentality/vanilla hoarder seems to be at a fairly steady 1:1.

Unfortunately, a decent number of rescue group members exhibit these habits. Currently I know of four officers in local groups who have 50+ in their homes. We generally deal with two or three cases of former members or members who pass on and leave a hidden legacy of dozens of cats.

Trouble is, in all cases, calling animal control nets rescuers a bad name, as it shows in the police/community logs. With the economy doing poorly (at least regionally) we've gone from adoption rates of tens per week to 1/5th that in the past three years. More cats, less homes, less money from donations, a nasty cycle.

Since the hoarders cannot physically divide attention to the cats as deserved, they tend to end up more feral than ones rescued from the outside world. Most end up being destroyed or released to the overcrowded feral cat colonies.

Things that help:

Funds to feral cat colonies
Funds at local vets for spay/neuters
Educating people about expected life expectencies indoors/mixed in-out/outside (2-4, 4-6, 14-18)
Educating people to the real costs of pets (they are not 5$ a month habit
Educating people that spaying/neutering does not make them "less of a cat"
Educating people that spay/neuter can occur at as little as 2-2.5 lbs.
Educating people that if they have a specific type of cat, there is one waiting for them with a rescue group.

Most importantly:
Acting as a foster for hard to place (older cats)
Acting as a bottle-baby home during the kitten season

sorry, bit of a soapbox moment there. Things are really tough right now in the rescue world.

(Dru, I think you have the life expectancies backwards from the order of where they live.)

Educating people about expected life expectencies indoors/mixed in-out/outside (2-4, 4-6, 14-18)

Er - there seems to be something a bit off with your numbers...

Beyond that, I agree wholeheartedly. I'd be tempted to add the standard "don't buy cute fuzzy things for special occasions" caveat as well.

Ancient Roman aristocrats (at the highest level, such as senators) owned households of hundreds or even thousands of slaves. The occupations of the slaves are specified in legal sources and in funerary inscriptions and can be very specific. Footman, doorman, butler, etc. doesn't begin to describe it; a great lady might have a maid ad margarita, in charge of her mistress's pearl jewelry.

The specialized slave households make zero sense from an economic standpoint, and rather little sense even from the viewpoint of status display (cf. Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class for modern times), but are perfectly explainable as instances of hoarding -- in this case, hoarding people.

The Roman elite may have collected slaves with hyper-specific occupations as a modern kitchen gear fetishist might collect different kinds of implements. The olive-pitter is distinct from the cherry-pitter, which must not be confused with the strawberry-huller.

And did Hitler, Stalin, and Mao hoard dead people? I'm reminded of Gogol's "Dead Souls."

Animal Protection on Pet Hoarding (note: I DO NOT endorse this legislation--it is a stealth means of putting the state in control of animal ownership--but the site is well done.)

Here is an article from the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical AssociationANIMAL HOARDING:
A public health problem veterinarians can take a lead role in solving. They have tips to help vets recognize hoarders:

This article from the Bend, Oregon paper, Local horse abuse case points to little-known issue (Dec. 2002), estimates that there are about 700 cases of animal hoarding per year. An Old Woman Has Too Many Horses (later in the post--the guy's not a hoarder, just an opportunistic scumbag).

I don't endorse Animal Advocacy but they have a roster of animal hoarding articles, including photos and links.

Oh, and to change the subject? Brian O'Connor points out that one real problem is the overabundance of rats in most cities...what is the humane way to control their numbers?

It is a bit of a send-up of PeTa's point of view.

Educating people about expected life expectencies indoors/mixed in-out/outside (2-4, 4-6, 14-18)

Maybe I'm confused by your notation here, but that sounds backwards to me as compared to everything else I've heard. Isn't it indoor cats that can expect a much longer lifetime?

Yes, the numbers are in fact reversed. Thank you for the catch everyone.

xeger:

Part of the Late November until New Years spiel on adoptions include confirming early on that the pet is not a holiday present in any way shape or form.

Unfortunately, we will still get a decent percentage over normal numbers back during January when the cuteness wears out. We have a "you can always return to us" policy, you see.

Happily though, we also do out best in terms of donations and difficult-to-place adoptions during the same period, so there is a definite silver lining!

Speaking as someone who has some issues with clutter in my own life, I think I understand how hoarding, including animal hoarding, works. (I don't have any pets--I love cats, but I'm mildly allergic to them--not so I can't be around them and pet them, but I've learned from experience that if I have them in the Space Age Bachelor Hovel, I'll feel it in my nose, eyes, and lungs.) Basically, there is a disconnect between the act of acquisition and the act of actually storing and owning. It's similar to wanting to eat something while actually being full and/or knowing that the desired food is not good for you. See object--WANT IT--and only later consider the implications of owning it. If one uses common sense, one can work around this. For example, if I am in a thrift shop, I will often grab whatever strikes my fancy--but before I make my purchases, I will carefully go over whatever I've grabbed, and reject a bunch of stuff for various reasons. I think that people who take in animals think the same way--MUST RESCUE--and then only later, if ever, consider the reality of their situation.

Feeding them to the overabundance of cats? Oh, maybe that's not humane. Although I'd think it would happen naturally.

I know. You said "humane." But that has to be the first step.

After that... Actually, I can't think of any humane ways to deal with them. I hate rats.

What's for afters?
Rat cake, rat sorbet, rat pudding, or strawberry tart.
Strawberry tart?
Well, it's got some rat in it.
How much?
Three. Rather a lot, really.
Well, I'll have a slice without so much rat in it.

Sorry - I just broke my rule about quoting MPFC, but I just couldn't resist.

Nobody is telling the rats to eat other rats. Providing economic incentives thereunto, yes, but we're not running ads suggesting that the athletic rat just up the way is far lower in carbs than the discarded Happy Meal. And the rats are probably too smart to go for a forced-saving proposal. At least, the elitist urban rats.

The article on animal hoarding is very disturbing and interesting. I own three dogs, and I cannot imagine the need for more!

However, I am a bit of a book hoarder. Unfortunately, my predilection is for (expensive) architecture and design hardcover volumes. Some of them could even be classified as "tomes" (the new Phaidon Atlas of World Architecture is gigantic!).

Throw in a pottery and glass collection, and my own architecture photographs, and I refer to my condo as "The Museum." And, I know that I spend far, far beyond what I should on these things.

But, I'm a bit of a loner, there's a snob appeal element, and I have very, very poor impulse control.

Plus, an Acoma Pueblo polychrome olla is just a beautiful piece of pottery that's too often hard to resist.

Dylan track is named greatest song

"Rolling Stone has named Bob Dylan's 'Like a Rolling Stone' the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Song of All Time in a new special edition of the magazine."

"'No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time,' said Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke in article accompanying the list of the 500 greatest songs."

"The Rolling Stones took second place for '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction', with John Lennon ('Imagine'), Marvin Gaye ('What's Going On') and Aretha Franklin ('Respect') completing the top five...."

In other news, Making Light named 'Making Light' by Eminem and the Rock Bottom Remainders [2006] the greatest blogging song of all time.