Cat Hoarding - How Many Cats Are Too Many?
The answer is of course, more cats than you can properly take care of are too many cats.
Three cats would be too many if you couldn't feed them and afford their veterinary bills. On the other hand two dozen cats may not be too many if you have the necessary finance, adequate time to care for them and ample space for them.
For most people though a limit on finance, time and space means that they could only properly care for a limited number of cats.
For those that practice cat hoarding there is only one criterion - the poor cat needs a home. They do not take into account how many animals they are already looking after, they do not stop to think that it will be yet another mouth to feed, they do not worry about space for the poor creature in their home that is already crowded out with cats.
The cat hoarder will not consider that they cannot afford veterinary bills, or even off the shelf pet medications. There is a good chance that the stray feline already has a condition that needs treatment before they let them into their home.
The feline population inside the hoarders homes keeps on increasing, but not only because they take in more and more moggies.
An awful lot of strays are not spayed or neutered. The cat collector has a house full of them and that means one thing, lots of litters of kittens. Does the collector get their kitties neutered? Not usually, they in all probability couldn't afford to do so, and even if they could it possibly would not enter their heads to do so. Result, more kittens and more cats living in misery.
Is Cat Hoarding An Illness?
Whether hoarding animals is a mental condition or not, is a question best answered by psychiatrists. It does seem to be an obsession though.
Cat collectors are often lonely individuals, they do not enjoy much in the way of human company. Hardly surprising when often their homes are littered with cat feces and even deceased felines. If they did not start off on the outside of society then the way in which they live ensures that they stay there.
Cat hoarding is not restricted to any one social economic group. One Morris County, NJ, resident had 93 cats removed by the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals from her two story house worth around a million dollars. The interior of the home was so covered in feces and trash that it was virtually ruined.
Neither is the problem restricted to any one part of the world, hoarding can occur anywhere. One elderly Moscow lady was keeping 117 cats in her cramped studio apartment on the thirteenth floor of a high rise.
Those that engage in cat hoarding are to be pitied rather than despised. But the practice does cause problems. It is a problem for the hoarded cats, they are not helped by living in squalid conditions, being undernourished and suffering from many serious medical conditions. It can be a problem too for those that live nearby to hoarders.
What can we do to ease the problem? Well if there was not so many unwanted cats at large then the hoarders could not take them in.
Three cats would be too many if you couldn't feed them and afford their veterinary bills. On the other hand two dozen cats may not be too many if you have the necessary finance, adequate time to care for them and ample space for them.
For most people though a limit on finance, time and space means that they could only properly care for a limited number of cats.
For those that practice cat hoarding there is only one criterion - the poor cat needs a home. They do not take into account how many animals they are already looking after, they do not stop to think that it will be yet another mouth to feed, they do not worry about space for the poor creature in their home that is already crowded out with cats.
The cat hoarder will not consider that they cannot afford veterinary bills, or even off the shelf pet medications. There is a good chance that the stray feline already has a condition that needs treatment before they let them into their home.
The feline population inside the hoarders homes keeps on increasing, but not only because they take in more and more moggies.
An awful lot of strays are not spayed or neutered. The cat collector has a house full of them and that means one thing, lots of litters of kittens. Does the collector get their kitties neutered? Not usually, they in all probability couldn't afford to do so, and even if they could it possibly would not enter their heads to do so. Result, more kittens and more cats living in misery.
Is Cat Hoarding An Illness?
Whether hoarding animals is a mental condition or not, is a question best answered by psychiatrists. It does seem to be an obsession though.
Cat collectors are often lonely individuals, they do not enjoy much in the way of human company. Hardly surprising when often their homes are littered with cat feces and even deceased felines. If they did not start off on the outside of society then the way in which they live ensures that they stay there.
Cat hoarding is not restricted to any one social economic group. One Morris County, NJ, resident had 93 cats removed by the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals from her two story house worth around a million dollars. The interior of the home was so covered in feces and trash that it was virtually ruined.
Neither is the problem restricted to any one part of the world, hoarding can occur anywhere. One elderly Moscow lady was keeping 117 cats in her cramped studio apartment on the thirteenth floor of a high rise.
Those that engage in cat hoarding are to be pitied rather than despised. But the practice does cause problems. It is a problem for the hoarded cats, they are not helped by living in squalid conditions, being undernourished and suffering from many serious medical conditions. It can be a problem too for those that live nearby to hoarders.
What can we do to ease the problem? Well if there was not so many unwanted cats at large then the hoarders could not take them in.
The reason that there are so many unwanted strays is, of course, that some of us are not responsible enough to to get our cats fixed. Larry Chamberlain is a life long cat lover and writes about all things cat related for the Best Cat Art website. Read what he has to say about Kitten Fleas. Article Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Larry_Chamberlain |
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