This must be the ultimate case of hoarding both of objects and of cats. This is truly a shocking case. It happened in the UK. The lady in question, Elizabeth Blore, 61, lived in what we call a council house which is a house owned by the local authority and which is rented to the resident at a cheap rental.
Elizabeth lived with her brother Chris at this council owned property. She had 80 semi-feral or domestic cats roaming around her rubbish-filled house. The photographs are amazing I think.
Elizabeth and her brother were evicted from the house in 2012. The neighbours reported a putrid smell coming from the property caused by piles of cat faeces in the garden and in the house.
The house was cleared of the 30 tonnes of rubbish and fumigated. It took three months. When they removed the rubbish they found the skeletons of at least 15 cats. They were under bin bags. She and her brother moved back in. I presume she was convicted of animal welfare abuses at the time.
Moving forward to the present in a magistrates court, Elizabeth Blore admitted being in breach of a court order imposed in May 2012 prohibiting her from keeping cats. She was also prohibited from feeding cats.
On 4 May 2017 animal welfare officers and police officers went to her home to make sure that she was obeying the court order of five years ago.
When they entered of the property there was excrement from the cat in the living room. There was an adult cat upstairs with newborn kittens. Elizabeth said that the cat was a stray and that the kittens were four weeks old. She said that “they have taken the cat’s away now so I don’t have any cats.”
She was found guilty of being in breach of the court order. She was fined under £140. She had to pay prosecution costs of a £85 pounds and a surcharge of £35.
This is the story of the lady who lived in a house with 30 tonnes of rubbish, 15 rotting cats under the rubbish and 80 semi-feral cats on top of the rubbish.
I am a hoarder but not as bad as the person you just showed We have rats in the house and I have some in my bedroom but I am going to clean up my room as I have the time to do it as I have finished school
I wish you well. Please start the clean up. Start immediately. And ask why you hoard and seek help to stop it. Do you hoard cats? Thanks for commenting.
Hoarding is a symptom of a mental illness and the sufferers genuinely cannot see that they are doing anything unusual. It is their normality and it is really frustrating to deal with a hoarder. When the brain “goes wrong” in that way it loses the ability to diagnose itself. I once tried to “help” a hoarder (luckily not a cat hoarder) and suggested she filled one binbag each day to throw out. She wasn’t even able to do that, even with things that most of us would see as rubbish or unsanitary. She had anxiety, depression, OCD and other mental issues all tied in with the hoarding behaviour. She was evicted for squalor.
My husbands parents were and probably are still hoarders. Let to his own devices my H will happily start piling up worthless bits of everything. They made his childhood resemble living in the city dump and worse taught that twisted thinking to him. I clean when he’s gone and out it all goes. We are totally disengaged with his family over these issues because they are animal collectors. His dad started with 3 goats and in two years had them stacked like cordwood with no way to feed them. His sister brings home litters of kittens that she then puts outside to fend for themselves and breed while claiming to be rescuing them. The same with dogs, her chickens, her pigeons, rabbits or any other animal they get their hands on eventually dies of neglect.
When they tore my in-laws place down people had to wear hazmat suits. They brought stuff over and my H carried it in our home covered in 40 years of mice, rat and cat urine and feces not because he’s doesn’t understand sanitation but because his parents never set it right in his head what was and was not normal. you can’t leave someone with a hoarding issue unsupervised.
I hear there were a lot of decomposed cats in the mess at my in-laws.
I’m spewing some personal stuff here because most people have never really seen or lived next to hoarders.
I know that I am a hoarder and I need help with cleaning it up. My sister will not come while we have rats in the house.
It’s been my opinion for a long time that people living on public assistance should be up for home inspections every 6 months. Many landlords are now writing in clauses with the lease that allow them to inspect the inside of a rental on a regular basis.
These cases are rarely just cases of cat hoarding. She obviously has serious mental disorders. The inability to keep the hose reasonably clean and dispose of rubbish which is an easy routine matter means she was not really aware of what was going on around her. I also have a lot of cats which produce a lot of work but my house passed muster for the filming of a Turkish IzTv documentary on my cats which was completed last week. I was also invited to lecture at a Veterinary and Felinology conference in Ankara to discuss the matter of the falsification or the Turkish Angora and Van breeds in the cat fancy. Dr Tarkan Ozcetin who arranged for the documentary to be made said my knowledge on these matters is highly respected. I will do my best to live up to that compliment, but perhaps Sarah Hartwell would consider participating in the conference. .
Unfortunately I can’t travel, but you have all of the information and diagrams I have published online – you could print it out as a handout if you want, or use the diagram showing the origin of the breeds as a slide.