Shedding Light on Animal Hoarding

Animal hoarding used to lurk in the shadows, either unseen or lampooned—the domain of “crazy cat ladies” and recluses. I suppose it’s to the credit of the many reality TV shows and YouTube clips that hoarding is no longer a secret. Still, the stigma remains. Animal Planet’s show about it is called “Confessions,” as if hoarding were merely a moral failing. Or entertainment. Most people read about or watch animal hoarders with a mixture of disgust, anger, and simple incomprehension.

Let’s try to sort those out. I’ve just returned from a conference where Dr. Gary Patronek, a veterinary professor and expert on hoarding, led us through some recent research. The next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), the bible of mental-health diagnoses, could list “hoarding disorder” for the first time (without confining it to animal hoarding). Assigning a DSM code to a disorder allows for third-party payment for treatment—i.e., psychiatric help. It also shapes the way therapists and the general public define behavior as normal and abnormal. Check out the website of the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium (HARC) and you’ll see that therapy—and legal action—is sorely needed.

Here’s a slide Patronek presented that shows how the disorder develops. Though we trivialize the problem when we dismiss hoarders as “crazy cat ladies”—for that matter, hoarders come in all shapes and sizes, sometimes stockpile all kinds of animals, and often present a very normal front to the world—there’s a grain of truth to the female part. More animal hoarders are women. This slide suggests how women may be overrepresented because of a greater risk of childhood trauma, marginalization, and loneliness.

animal hoarding

One very clear thing about animal hoarders is that they need intervention to stop. After all, most of them think they’re doing the right thing. And two of their signal traits are denial and persistence.

Unlike animal torturers, who lack a connection with animals and intentionally impose pain and suffering, hoarders have an intense (coping) bond with animals and their intent is to avoid harm. However, they are unable to mentalize, or understand the mental states of others, and this leads to tremendous physical and emotional animal suffering.

One Oakland woman faces a felony animal-abuse charge after a raid netted 93 cats and two dogs at her home. She told the Chronicle, “I was so angry when they took the cats. I couldn’t believe it… Most of the cats were in good shape, and a lot of them were my personal pets. They had no right to take them.”

The operative word is most.  Oakland Animal Services, which seized the animals, obviously disagrees, alleging that the majority of her cats suffered from emaciation, diarrhea, severe parasite infestations, or other maladies. She disputes that allegation. But even by her own admission, not all the cats were in good shape. Sixteen of the 93 were, in fact, euthanized.

Hoarding is a complex phenomenon that was long considered a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). There are differences, though, especially between people who collect animals and those who hoard objects. People with OCD find the disorder unpleasant; hoarders not so. As the HARC site points out, hoarders are also likely to have impaired insight about their actions, and lack the classic OCD traits of repetitive behavior and need for order. Hoarding does share many traits with impulse-control disorders. A new entry in DSM-V would tie together these many strands.

The spectrum of animal hoarding embraces three types:

First is the overwhelmed caregiver, victim of what scholars are calling “pathological altruism.” These folks obtain animals passively. People drop off their dogs or cats because they know so-and-so will always take them in. (Interesting idea, this danger of altruism. Human behavior always has another curveball to toss at you.)

Then there are the rescue hoarders. They’re mission-driven, acquiring animals both passively and actively. They usually have an extreme fear of death and feel that only they can give an animal proper care. Prosecution is often the only way to stop them. And beware: collecting animals in the name of “hospice” or “sanctuary” doesn’t guarantee they’ll be well cared for (warning: disturbing imagery).

An AP story from two years ago quoted Dr. Randall Lockwood, ASPCA’s senior vice president of forensic sciences and anticruelty projects, as saying that rescues and shelters make up a quarter of the 6,000 hoarding cases reported every year. There’s a simple lesson here for a guardian who can’t care for a beloved pet because of disease, injury, or age: be wary of people who say they can! Visit the facility—not once, several times. Make sure a self-identified hospice or sanctuary really does comfort animals or find them new homes.

Last is the exploitive hoarder—most harmful because they’re sociopathic: charming, manipulative, lacking empathy. Many of these hoarding cases are notorious, on a scale that staggers the imagination. Prosecutors refer to “death camps” for animals.

So we witness the phenomenon of many animals being rescued twice: first from abandonment, and again from their “rescuers.” As if animal welfare weren’t enough of a struggle, there’s the challenge of what HARC calls “unmet human needs.” HARC points out that

any legitimate shelter, rescue or sanctuary puts the needs of the animals first, recognizes when capacity to provide care is exceeded, and takes the required steps (stopping intake, increasing adoption, increasing staff or resources) in order to provide proper care. Competent organizations encourage visitors, volunteers, and transparency.

HARC also offers a simple chart showing how to tell a competent caregiver from one that’s substandard or inhumane. Again the five freedoms of animal welfare point the way.

Animals removed from a hoarder may have been bullied, untreated, starved, deprived of any normal human contact—and then stressed again by the removal. But some can be restored to health and offered to loving homes. Many of the cats seized in the Oakland case I mentioned are up for adoption. Please support Oakland Animal Services if this story speaks to you, and consider giving one of these animals a safe home.

Categories: Misc, Policy