By Rebecca Simmons
To someone desperate to find a home for a litter of kittens,
the Chubbers Animal Rescue would have appeared to be the
perfect haven. Nestled in a wooded lot in Caroline County,
Maryland, the former home of Linda Farve and Ernie Mills was a
place where people could relinquish cats, seemingly secure in
the knowledge that the couple would help the animals find happy
homes.
But in reality, behind the facade of the cheerful website
and rural home, tragedy lurked. When animal control officers
and volunteers from the Caroline County Humane Society and The
Humane Society of the United States entered the home on May 1,
2003 they found more than 300 cats, including more than 70
felines in various forms of decomposition. If the smell of
animal death weren't enough, volunteers also encountered
surfaces covered with inches of waste and garbage.
"In one part of the house, we were stepping on several
layers of feces and skeletons," says The HSUS's Krista Hughes,
one of the volunteers who served as part of a team to document
the situation and rescue the cats. "It was disgusting. The
amount of filth was unbelievable."
It didn't start out that way. Several years earlier, the
Humane Society of Caroline County had visited the Favre/Mills
home and approved Chubbers as a legitimate animal rescue
organization. Soon afterward, the couple began accepting and,
in some cases, actively seeking out cats from around the East
Coast. It wasn't long before the number of cats began to
multiply, as this horrific case of animal hoarding
unfolded.
A Deadly Obsession
For most people, the term "animal hoarding" conjures up
images of an eccentric "cat lady." Despite the stereotype that
collecting animals is simply a quirky behavior, recent research
has pointed to a direct correlation between psychological
problems and the tendency to hoard.
"Hoarding is very often a symptom of a greater mental
illness, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder. For most
hoarders, it is likely that their actions are the result of a
true pathology, even though they are still usually able to
function quite well in society," says Randall Lockwood, HSUS
vice president for Research and Educational Outreach.
Because animal hoarders quite often appear to lead normal
lives, it's important to recognize when a person's fixation
with animals has gotten out of control. The HSUS defines an
animal hoarder as a person who has more animals than he or she
can properly care for. Another defining characteristic is the
hoarder's denial of his inability to care for the animals and
his failure to grasp the impact his neglect has on the animals,
the household, and the human occupants of the dwelling.
What's more, hoarders are usually well-educated and possess
excellent communication skills. Many hoarders have an uncanny
ability to attract sympathy for themselves, no matter how
abused their animals may be, which is often how hoarders manage
to fool others into thinking the situation is under
control.
"Very few hoarder cases simply involve good intentions gone
awry, despite the insistence of the hoarder that he or she
loves the animals and wants to save their lives," says
Lockwood. "It's unbelievable how someone who reports to love
animals so much can cause so much suffering."
House of Horrors
For many involved in investigating animal cruelty and
neglect, hoarding cases are among the most horrific they ever
encounter. "The amount of suffering in a hoarder case is more
widespread and of a longer duration than most animal cruelty
cases," says Lockwood. "Although the case of a dog being
violently killed is shocking, in a hoarder case the suffering
can be felt by hundreds of animals for months and months on
end."
Indeed, hoarding can have serious repercussions for the
animals involved. "Hoarding can often amount to physical,
medical and physiological neglect in the extreme," says
Lockwood. The unsanitary conditions of the dwelling and lack of
veterinary treatment and social interaction for animals all add
up to serious neglect. The animals involved often endure a
variety of ailments, such as malnutrition, parasitic
infestation, infection, and disease.
According to the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium,
many hoarder dwellings have been condemned as unfit for human
habitation. Polluted air in some homes is so irritating to the
respiratory tract, because of the high level of ammonia
present, that a visitor cannot enter without protective
breathing apparatus.
Long-Term Solutions
Because of the horrible suffering involved, criminal animal
cruelty charges are increasingly being filed in hoarding cases.
Yet, because animal hoarding is linked to mental illness, the
most appropriate resolution is still being debated. A
combination of therapy and long-term monitoring is the often
the best approach, in part because of the high recidivism rate.
(Most hoarders revert to old behaviors unless they receive
ongoing mental health assistance and monitoring.)
Jail time may also be appropriate in some hoarding cases,
although, according to Ann Chynoweth, counsel to Investigative
Services for The HSUS, it's uncommon for criminal charges to be
brought against hoarders, and even more uncommon that those
charged receive jail time.
The Caroline County case was unusual in this respect. Both
Mills and Farve were sentenced to 90 days in jail and five
years probation after pleading guilty to three and four counts
respectively of felony animal cruelty, yet they were scheduled
to receive a mental evaluation only as an afterthought.
"We are pleased that Maryland's felony animal cruelty law
was meaningfully enforced in this massive case of animal
cruelty, and we applaud the judge for acknowledging the
severity of the crime," says Chynoweth. "At the same time, we
are disappointed that there was not more attention to the need
of psychological counseling in this case."
Community members can make sure hoarders get the help they
need, while protecting animals at the same time, by notifying
local police and/or animal control if they suspect someone is
hoarding animals. In addition, as a basic precaution, anyone
who is considering relinquishing an animal to a private rescue
group should first visit the premises and ask to see where the
animals are kept.
It's vital that people work together to stop animal
hoarding. As the Caroline County case and recent studies
illustrate, good intentions aren't always enough. It really
does seem possible to love animals to death.
Rebecca Simmons is the Outreach
Communications Coordinator for the Companion Animals section of
The HSUS.
