NEWS AND COMMENT: This is certainly one of Britain's worst hoarding cases but I would doubt that it is the worst because there are some truly horrendous examples of hoarding. And the hoarding of inanimate objects spills over to the hoarding of animate objects such as domestic cats which is why you find both junk and the bodies of cats in a home occupied by a hoarder.
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| Image: Blanchards/Triangle News. |
I just written an article about cat hoarding and the mental illness behind it which may interest people and if so you can click on this link. It's quite an in depth article. We have to be compassionate about cat hoarders although through their hoarding they often harm cats and sometimes kill them through neglect so they need to be criticised as well as treated for their mental illness.
In this case a 70-year-old man lived in a property in Lancashire, UK, alone. The home was so stuffed full of junk that the people commissioned to clean it had to enter the upstairs through a ladder set against an upstairs window. There was no way in to that part of the house as I understand it.
It is reported that there were at least four mummified, pet cats wrapped in newspaper placed on shelves in the property.
The hoarding got so bad that he couldn't get rid of the cats he had killed through neglect or perhaps they died of old age, we don't know. It's likely that this man neglected the cats to the point where they were harmed and possibly died unnecessarily.
One of the great problems with hoarders - and I'm including cat hoarding here - is they don't look at things objectively. They don't have the financial means necessary to take a cat to a veterinarian, and they are sometimes unaware of the illnesses suffered by cats. They are blinkered because of their mental health problems.
It took a team of cleaners 45 hours to make some headway in cleaning the property.
In my view, the cause of hoarding of all kinds is anxiety and at worst fear. Hoarding reassures the anxious person. I've argued that everyone has 'the hoarding gene' as I've put it but almost everyone manages to control it. Most people like to possess objects. They enjoy buying objects. They don't like to get rid of them. Over the years they acquire objects and the home becomes fuller.
Occasionally we read about high profile celebrities having a mass clear out of high quality, expensive possessions. These people are - in an elegant and high profile way - hoarders of expensive possessions. Normally hoarding relates to inanimate possessions but as mentioned it can spill over to animals and interestingly we never hear about dog hoarding but cats are a prime target for hoarding perhaps because they are perceived as being independent and able to cope by themselves which they can't by the way.
And there is historically a looser connection between domestic cats and owners. Put it this way, it is easier to park a cat in a corner of a home and forget about them as a cat hoarder might do but much harder to do the same with a dog. A dog is more in your face.
And there are lots of cats that need rescuing. There are lots of stray cats, feral cats and unwanted cats from people who allow their cats to breed. We have to put some blame on the people who create unwanted cats which facilitates the activities of a cat hoarder.
RELATED: Cat hoarding – full discussion.
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