The 'scent of ammonia' is the dead giveaway for muti-cat homes

Cat hoarders or cat owners with more cats than they can properly care for can be detected from the outside if you are olfactorily observant because the 'scent of ammonia' leaks out of the windows even if they've only been opened by a small amount which is usually the case because these negligent cat owners KNOW that their homes are saturated in the scent of ammonia - let's call it the gross smell of ammonia - and keep their windows closed which makes the atmosphere inside their home even worse, which is detrimental to the health of cats and humans alike.

There's a story today in The Independent newspaper which mentions that ghastly phrase "the scent of ammonia". It concerns a family who lost control of the number of cats in their home. An isolated family with one family member refusing others to enter the home and where their mother died leaving their father alone with cats who clearly hadn't been sterilised and therefore procreated to the point where inside the home there were as many as 175 cats.

When a family member finally was able to enter the home they said that the scent of ammonia was so strong that they felt that they needed to wash their clothes after less than an hour in the home.

Below is the reason why cat urine gives off ammonia gas and below that is a section on how inhaling ammonia for a long time can potentially damage your health.

Health

I am concerned not only for the cats but the people in these homes. The cats in multi-cat homes where the owners have lost control and are not keeping their home clean and the cat litter trays emptied regularly et cetera are constantly inhaling ammonia. How does that impact health? The section below at the base of this article explains.

Urea

Cat urine smells strongly of ammonia because it contains urea, a waste product formed when proteins break down in the body. In the litter box or any place where the urine sits for a while, bacteria start to break down the urea into ammonia, releasing a sharp, pungent odor.

Several factors contribute to why cat urine smells more intense than that of other animals:

1. High Protein Diet: Cats are obligate carnivores, meaning they rely primarily on animal protein. This leads to more urea in their urine as a byproduct of protein metabolism.

  

2. Concentrated Urine: Cats tend to conserve water due to their desert ancestry, making their urine more concentrated, and thus, the odor more potent.

3. Aging Urine: As cat urine sits, bacterial activity increases, breaking down urea and releasing more ammonia. If left uncleaned, other compounds, like mercaptans (found in skunk spray), also develop, making the odor even stronger over time.

Cleaning the litter box frequently and using odor-neutralizing products can help reduce this strong smell.

If cats and people are constantly inhaling ammonia gas in cat hoarding homes how does this impact health?

In homes with excessive cat urine build-up, like in severe cat hoarding situations, constant inhalation of ammonia gas poses serious health risks for both people and cats. Ammonia is a toxic gas that can irritate and damage the respiratory system and other organs when inhaled over long periods, especially at higher concentrations. Here’s how it impacts health:

1. Respiratory Issues

• People: Ammonia exposure irritates the respiratory tract, causing coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath, and burning sensations in the nose, throat, and lungs. Prolonged exposure can lead to chronic bronchitis and worsen existing respiratory conditions like asthma or COPD.
• Cats: Cats, with their sensitive respiratory systems, are highly susceptible to the effects of ammonia. Exposure can lead to respiratory infections, asthma, and bronchitis. Cats may also exhibit coughing, sneezing, and nasal discharge.

2. Eye and Skin Irritation

• People: Ammonia exposure can cause burning, itching, or redness in the eyes, as well as skin irritation if there’s contact with urine-soaked surfaces. Chronic exposure may worsen these effects, leading to persistent eye inflammation.
• Cats: Cats may also experience eye irritation, leading to conjunctivitis and other eye infections. Their skin can become inflamed, particularly on the paws if they’re frequently stepping in soiled litter.

3. Neurological and Psychological Effects

• People: In severe cases, prolonged high-level exposure to ammonia has been linked to symptoms like dizziness, headache, confusion, and overall cognitive impairment. Anxiety, stress, and depression are also common among individuals in hoarding environments due to the overwhelming conditions.
• Cats: High ammonia levels can cause stress in cats, leading to behavioral issues, and potentially affecting their neurological health, causing lethargy or disorientation.

4. Damage to the Immune System

• People and Cats: Constant exposure to ammonia can weaken the immune system, making both people and cats more susceptible to infections. This is particularly dangerous in a hoarding situation where sanitation is poor, and there’s a higher risk of bacterial and viral spread among animals and people.

5. Potential Long-Term Organ Damage

• People and Cats: Over time, severe and prolonged ammonia inhalation can damage the liver, kidneys, and lungs. In the worst cases, it can contribute to irreversible lung damage and kidney issues.

In severe hoarding situations, clean-up and remediation, including proper ventilation and often professional decontamination, are essential for restoring a healthy environment. For people and animals already

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins. Also, sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified. And, I rely on scientific studies but they are not 100% reliable. Finally, (!) I often express an OPINION on the news. Please share yours in a comment.

Cats in cat hoarding environments breath in ammonia fumes

This is a topic which is rarely if ever discussed. In the homes of cat hoarders, you invariably find that there is a strong smell of ammonia. This is because of the high concentrations of ammonia in cat urine, higher than that in human urine. And if the area in which they live is very confined like a campervan, the cats within it are breathing in high levels of ammonia for a very long time. This adds to the potential for ill-health. These sorts of levels of ammonia can harm health profoundly.

Many cats in truck looking at camera. There were 43 cats inside this U-Haul truck. Image in public domain. These are not the cats in the story.

We are used to reading about cats being rescued from a hoarding environment suffering from upper respiratory tract infections, secondary bacterial infections (in the eyes particularly), fleas, worms, ringworm, anorexia, and starvation. But we don't hear about this background health issue which pervades the atmosphere namely the gas of ammonia.

And ironically, it is the hoarders who also inhale this gas, day in and day out. It must do them harm as well. I was reminded of this problem because of a story emanating from Rhode Island's Providence Animal Control. They rescued 18 cats in an abandoned camper. (Newsweek report) They described it as the worst case of animal hoarding that they had seen.

They said that the ammonia levels inside the camper was so high that they'd make a person going into it ill for days. I suspect that they wore masks and hazmat suits. But when I think about that I think about the cats. How long were they in that campervan breathing in this foetid ammonia?

Of course, all the cats were flea-ridden, filled with worms, emaciated and they had ringworm as well. These sorts of cat hoarding cases start within the home and sometimes the person loses their home and lives in a camper and takes their cats with them. And sometimes they use a camper as extra space to hoard more cats.

The case also brings to mind another issue about cat hoarding. What causes it? You will find that it is agreed by the experts that cat hoarding is a mental illness. My personal viewpoint is that a person who hoards any object can also hoard cats because they seem to treat cats as 'objects' which is why they neglect them.

But the reasons why people hoard cats are complex. Once again, in my view, the starting point is insecurity. It is linked to obsessive-compulsive disorders which is also due to a feeling of insecurity and the need to control things. But people hoard objects because they think they might need them. They are playing safe. They keep them just in case. And if the basic mentality is to play safe because they are risk-averse, this points to insecurities. These people are insecure, anxious and worried. They collect these items around them to help them feel more secure. But, as mentioned, there are other issues such as depression and perhaps on occasions delusional thinking.

Associated: Cat hoarder admits defeat and seeks help which is rare.

The last point is evident because very often they say they love cats but they neglect them so badly that they harm and kill them. They don't acknowledge this deficiency in their thinking. They end up putting their dead cats in freezers. This is an extension of the hoarding process. They can't even bury them or cremate them. They have to keep the bodies whole in their home. There is no question it is a form of madness.

Associated: Cat hoarder and his 16 cats sue the local authority for compensation

Cat hoarders do their best to hide what they're doing and therefore they are cognisant of what they are doing. This is one peculiarity of their mental health. They don't recognise that they are killing their cats through neglect but they do recognise that they might upset the neighbours if they found out what they were doing.

And this brings me to the last point. When they are found out (due to the foul smell of ammonia leaking out of their home) and the cats rescued, the question is how do you deal with the person. Do you punish them or do you treat them with drugs and counselling? The answer is that you should do both. However, the more important part of the process is to work on their mental health issues to prevent them doing the same thing again. Often cat hoarders return to their bad habits. It's a deeply ingrained mental problem which perhaps can't be shifted even with the best treatments.

It's always the smell that exposes homes where there are too many cats

Pretty well every time that a person is exposed for having too many cats it is because a foul odour emanates from their home and a neighbour picks it up and complains to the authorities. It's about the person who owns a lot of cats being unable to manage. And the smell is of urine and perhaps faeces. It is an ammonia smell (urine). Which means that some of the cats are urinating inappropriately and perhaps defecating inappropriately as well. Or, it means that the person in charge is not cleaning out the litter trays properly. Both of these things are happening simultaneously. For the cats they are urinating appropriately by the way. Let's get that straight.

What it looks like in a home with too many cats. Chaos and massive smells. Singapore cat hoarder seeks help. Photo: Instagram page of the rescue who is helping her: Cats of Anchor Vale.

It is likely to be the former because if you have 20 cats in a home there are going to be stresses between the cats leading to inappropriate elimination. It will also potentially lead to spraying to mark territory which still happens even when cats are sterilised. When cats are boxed together like this in a very small space, they cannot enjoy the normal amount of space that domestic cats require which in my estimation is going to be a number of acres. 

Of course, domestic cats are adaptable and they can get used to living with much smaller territories (home ranges as they are called) but instinctively, given the freedom to enjoy a natural home range it would be much larger than can be provided inside a home with many other cats. This results in stresses among some cats.

The foul smell that emanates from these homes which is picked up by neighbours is waste product produced by the cats lying around the home which the person is unable to cope with. It is a carelessness in adopting too many cats combined with that same carelessness in being unable to manage the cats to the point where there is no smell in the home. Can you imagine that? I home in which there are 15 cats, let's say, and no smell. Is it possible to achieve that? It is and it has been achieved.

On December 23, 2019 I wrote about a man who has 15 cats and 22 litter boxes. His home smells perfectly! His name is Peter Cohen and he lives in a beautiful Californian home.

If you read the article, the first point that you will notice right away is that he has 22 litter boxes and 15 cats. This is in line with Jackson Galaxy's advice that there should be more litter boxes than cats. And Cohen puts litter boxes in closets i.e. an enclosed space and critically, because he is a builder and knows how to do this, he creates a negative air pressure inside the litter box closets by running a ventilation fan around the clock which sucks the air from the spaces to the exterior.

Finally, I presume that the air sucked out is pushed up through the roof because there'd be no point in pushing smelly air left and right of the house into neighbour's properties.

So, that's how you do it. And, you know what, the sort of systems that Mr Cohen has set up are going to prove impossible for the typical owner of many cats. Therefore, I have to conclude that if you have 15 or 20 cats living full-time inside a typical home it's going to be impossible to keep the smell down unless you have a huge amount of energy, time, commitment, and intelligence and building skills. If I'm correct in that assessment, it tells us that there must be an upper limit in the number of cats that a person can reasonably manage when they are confined to the home.

And here is the clincher: they have to be confined to the home. If they are allowed to wander around outside of the home the neighbours will complain anyway. Cat hoarders always confine their cats to the home. And they don't bother to build an enclosure in the garden because I guess that would also expose their activities to neighbours. They try and keep things secret, away from the prying eyes of neighbours. This of course exacerbates the problem making it impossible to stop massive odours building up.

And they have to open the window sometimes and in doing this the odour escapes. Because the odour is so pungent even small amounts of this air gets into neighbours' properties. It just depends how tolerant the neighbours are as to whether they complain or accept it.

I am therefore drawn to the only sensible conclusion which is that local authorities must have bylaws restricting the number of cats that a person can own to around five. This, I think, is a reasonable number which is manageable. And this rule will apply to any country anywhere. Although most of the news about cat hoarding comes from America it does not mean that cat orders only live in America, it happens anywhere. It's just that most cat news comes from America because they love their cats which, by the way, makes it very strange that they declaw them, an act which is totally against love between species.