cat hoarding – Pain In The Bud

Is That A Cat Or A Seal?

Buddy does his best seal impression! Nearby, our local SPCA deals with a horrific hoarding case.

I snapped the photo below when Buddy heard the upstairs neighbors making noise. Little dude looks like a seal! (The animal, not the singer. Bud’s singing voice is terrible!) All he needs are some flippers:

The acne spot I wrote about earlier is healed, but as you can see there’s still a tiny spot on his chin where his fur hasn’t completely grown back yet. Thankfully it’s no longer causing him any discomfort, and he’s back to asking for chin scratches while purring happily.

Of course he won’t be happy if I share an unflattering photo without a flattering one, so here he is looking cute:

Note the huge meowscles and ripped physique!

In some sad news, there’s an ongoing hoarding case in White Plains, NY, just a few miles from Casa de Buddy.

Police responded to an apartment building in the city after neighbors began complaining of “horrific” smells coming from the unit and discovered an older woman living with at least 40 cats in appalling conditions.

The cats, who are all suffering from ailments including respiratory and eye infections, were everywhere — including inside furniture and atop the kitchen cabinets where a few of them were able to get away from the feces-packed floor.

White Plains cat hoarding case — Cats crowd the limited space above the kitchen cabinets to escape the feces-encrusted floor of the apartment. Credit: Westchester SPCA

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Staff from the SPCA of Westchester County have had to wear hazmat suits to operate inside the apartment. They’re in the process of removing the cats and have set up food and water stations for those they haven’t trapped yet while they try to clean some of the fecal matter and garbage, but they say the number of cats could rise as they find more hiding in the apartment. One cat was pregnant and gave birth to a single kitten on the feces-caked floor. The kitten was quickly removed and is under the close care of veterinary staff but is sickly and “clinging to life,” the SPCA said.

Incredibly, authorities have not charged the human occupant of the apartment. They say she meant well at first but the situation quickly spiraled out of control, as it often does when people who aren’t equipped to care for multiple cats take it upon themselves to “rescue” strays. No one sets out to become a hoarder. It usually happens when initial good intentions become unmoored from reality, but I do wonder how people who find these situations slipping from their control aren’t horrified by the suffering of the animals. Mental illness has to play a part.

Regardless, the situation is dire for the cats and the SPCA anticipates many thousands of dollars in veterinary costs on top of supplies and man hours involved in trapping the cats, getting them veterinary care, cleaning them up and working with them to help them overcome the trauma of their experience so they can become ready for adoption.

The SPCA of Westchester County was Buddy’s first veterinary office where he got his first shots and the snip as a kitten. They were very kind and gentle with the little guy, and at the time I’d just been laid off from my job so it really helped to have a place that provided quality veterinary care for significantly less than private vets. They do good work, and we wish them luck as they deal with a difficult task.

Sunday Cats: Hoarders In Buddyland, Alleged Dallas Zoo Thief Nabbed, P-22 Remembered

More than 6,000 people, a capacity crowd, said goodbye to the famed mountain lion P-22 at The Greek Theatre in LA.

When police went to a Yorktown, NY, home for a welfare check this week, the last thing they expected was to find an army of cats.

The responding officers breached the home when no one answered, finding an elderly couple deceased inside, along with some 150 hungry, neglected cats. Police don’t believe there was foul play in the death of the couple, but the number of cats and the condition of the home have “hindered” their investigation.

The Westchester County SPCA is taking on the monumental task of collecting the cats, giving each of them veterinary care and finding homes for them. Staff there are calling it the largest single rescue in their history, and they’d already filled their own facilities and local shelters to capacity by the time they’d rescued 100 of the famished felines, leaving them scrambling for room to place the others. Some have upper respiratory, eye and skin infections, the SPCA said, while most of the cats were malnourished and dehydrated.

Credit: SPCA of Westchester County

Credit: SPCA of Westchester

Despite living in conditions police described as “filth and squalor,” the cats are well-socialized and friendly, rescuers say. They believe the husband and wife may have been Abyssinian breeders at some point.

“It’s very unusual in a case like this, especially with that number of cats, for them to be as social and sweet as they are, usually they are scared when they come from a situation like this because they haven’t had a lot of human interaction,” the SPCA of Westchester’s Lisa Bonnano told the New York Post.

Yorktown is about 28 miles north of Casa Buddy, and we can vouch for the excellent work done by the Westchester County SPCA, whose veterinarians gave kitten Buddy his first shots and gave him the snip.

Veterinary costs alone are expected to exceed $40,000, so if you’d like to help, you can make a donation here.

Alleged Dallas Zoo thief nabbed

When 24-year-old Davion Irvin stopped an employee at the Dallas World Aquarium to ask about exotic animals there, the staffer recognized him as the same man pictured in a surveillance still from the Dallas Zoo.

Police released the image to the public after three separate enclosures at the zoo were breached, leading to the brief disappearance of a spotted leopard on Jan. 13 and the theft of two emperor tamarin monkeys about two weeks later. The langur monkey exhibit was also breached, but the animals were not removed.

After the aquarium’s staff tipped them off, cops caught up to Irvin a few miles away and have since linked him to all three break-ins. They charged him with two counts of burglary — for the monkeys and the leopard — and six counts of animal cruelty. They’re also looking into whether Irvin may have been involved with the “very suspicious” death of an endangered lappet-faced vulture on Jan. 21.

Cops, who initially suspected the thief was looking for exotic animals to breed or sell, have said Irvin hasn’t told them why he wanted the primates and the medium size cats. Their investigation is ongoing.

Thousands say goodbye to P-22

More than six thousand people crowded into The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on Saturday to say goodbye to P-22, the Hollywood Lion, a puma who made the hills above the city his home for more than a decade.

p22mural — One of several new murals of beloved mountain lion P-22, who was euthanized in December after he was hit by a car and suffering from an infection.

People spoke about seeing his curious face pop up on their doorball cameras, spotting him disappearing into the trees in Griffith Park, and how his presence piqued the curiosity of many people who took the time to learn more about mountain lions.

But the unofficial theme of the event was how P-22 showed people humans and wildlife can co-exist, and how our species can do a lot more to make sure the animals we share the Earth with will survive in the future. One woman told LAist that before she learned about P-22, she “used to think they were scary” and aggressive like the big cats they’re often confused with.

Others said he inspired them to get directly involved with conservation efforts.

“We are wildlife. We are creatures of nature, just as all the animals and plants are,” archaeologist Desireé Martinez, a member of the indigenous Gabrielino-Tongva tribe, told KTLA. “What can we do to make sure that the creatures that we are sharing this nature with have the ability to survive and live on — just like us?”

P-22’s unforgettable visage, already familiar to Los Angelinos, is now ubiquitous in his former range, with several murals adorning the sides of buildings and other displays bearing his image.

“He inspired so much happiness. I mean, look at all the people that are here,” Babetta Gonzalez told LAist. “We have to remember that we are in their neighborhood and we need to respect their environment. We have integrated, but we could do a lot better.”

Cats Suffer From Human Mental Illness Too

Hoarding conditions mean misery and death for the unfortunate cats involved.

Having Google alerts set up for cat-related new can yield some pretty awesome and unique stories as fodder for this blog, but it can also be seriously depressing, with story after story about cats getting shot with arrows, pellets and bullets, cats poisoned with antifreeze, cats abused for online fame and even cats killed by psychotic ex-boyfriends or girlfriends.

There are, unfortunately, plenty of hoarding stories as well, and they’re a reminder that cats don’t just suffer physical abuse at the hands of humans, they suffer mental abuse and neglect by mentally ill people.

That’s the case in Park Township, Michigan, where authorities acting on a tip found more than 150 cats living in “deplorable conditions”. Even protective gear couldn’t entirely filter the smell inside the home, animal control officers said.

The town declared the house unfit for human habitation and the local animal authority, St. Joseph County Animal Control, needed help from nearby animal shelters and rescues to confiscate the cats, who will be given veterinary care and rehabbed before they’re offered for adoption.

The raid was “by far” the “biggest animal seizure we’ve done,” animal control supervisor Greg Musser told the local NBC affiliate.

The cats range in age from newborn kittens to adults. Two cats were euthanized. Taking in more than 150 cats is no small task, and the shelter is asking for help with cat/kitten food, litter and other supplies.

“We have been working tirelessly to take care of all these cats on top of the normal business,” the shelter’s Facebook page reads. “We are doing our best to answer the phone and return messages. We are in need of wet and dry kitten food, litter, pee pads, laundry detergent and bleach. We are also in need of gently used baby blankets.”

In an updated story, authorities in a nearby town found similar hoarding conditions in a second property owned by the same woman, who moved some of the cats between them after a natural gas leak at the first home.

While the number of cats is unusual, the story is not: Rescuers confiscated 50 cats and 30 raccoons from a home in Ohio on Aug. 6, following the rescue of 97 cats from another Ohio home two weeks earlier. Less than two weeks ago, the SPCA pulled more than 30 dog and cats from a Pennsylvania home in which the inside temperature exceeded 100 degrees. Authorities found 150 cats in a Toronto home last month, including several kittens who were in seriously bad shape.

Those are just a sampling pulled from the first few results on Google News. Doubtless a lot of these people mean well when they start taking in cats, and the behavior is the result of untreated mental illness. But what can be done to protect cats from these situations?

Featured image credit Chamber of Hoarders. It depicts another hoarding situation, similar to the Michigan case.

Man Divorces Queen Of All Crazy Cat Ladies

With his bed “constantly defiled” by cat poop, the husband slept on a mat.

A judge in Singapore has granted a divorce to a 70-year-old man who was driven to desperation by his wife’s obsession with cats.

His wife says she was visited in a dream by her late mother, who told her to be kind to cats, for it was the only way she would “cross into paradise.”

The woman took the dream seriously, feeding strays and taking them home.

“This feline collection created quite a nuisance,” Judge Sheik Mustafa said. “The cats roamed around the home freely. They were not toilet-trained and would urinate and defecate indiscriminately.”

hoardingcats2 — A photo taken in the home of a 62-year-old woman who had 125 cats and three rabbits in her home. Credit: Montgomery County (Maryland) Animal Control

Things got worse as the fecal output increased in proportion to the number of cats the woman adopted. Neighbors called police to complain about the “stench of cat faeces and urine emanating from the matrimonial home.”

The woman’s husband was running out of patience too: With his bed “constantly defiled” by cat poop, he started sleeping on a mat.

Cops warned the woman to curtail her cat collection, per Singapore’s Today, but she kept collecting them like Pokemon. In 2003 — six years after his wife’s allegedly prophetic dream — the man called police again and begged them to do something, but the cops said it was a domestic dispute and declined to arrest his wife or otherwise interfere beyond giving her another warning.

The final straw? The man was sleeping on his mat one night in 2007 when he woke up soaked to find one of the cats urinating on his face.

He left the couple’s two-story terrace home permanently and moved in with his brother-in-law, who presumably knew his sister had gone off the deep end and was sympathetic to her husband’s plight.

hoarder3 — Animal hoarding is a serious problem, with the cats and dogs often living in horrid conditions. Credit: Animal Planet

The cats weren’t the only issue in the marriage: The husband alleges the wife estranged him from their children, and the wife helped herself to half her husband’s retirement pension, reasoning that she was entitled to it even though they’d been separated for years.

The wife had also been embroiled in a legal battle with a domestic servant. The maid, who helped care for the army of cats, said she wasn’t paid. The woman in turn accused the maid of killing 40 of her cats. The judge sided with the maid.

Neither party was named in legal documents from Singaporean courts. Mustafa issued his decision on May 21.

After years of fighting the divorce to avoid having to split or sell the home they owned, the wife finally agreed to a divorce settlement, ending their 45-year marriage, with Mustafa ruling that “on a balance of probabilities, the husband has proved his case.”

“I considered the possibility of reconciliation. I find that there is none. The parties’ attitudes are utterly not compromising; the husband is insistent on ending the marriage, and the wife is in vehement refusal to end the marriage,” Mustafa said. “The couple have been consciously estranged from each other for 15 years. That is a long period of time by any measure. There is no ember of love or affection left to rekindle.”

Image credits: [1], [2], [3]