This story comes from Gahanna, Ohio, USA. A man was living with 55 dead cats. In all there were 166 cats therefore 111 were living. I think that it is the most extraordinary example of cat hoarding that I have read about. Columbus Humane staff unsurprisingly wore protective suits when removing the 111 cats last Wednesday morning from the home of the 60-year-old man.
Of the living cats many were in deplorable condition said a spokesman from Columbus Humane. Veterinarians were examining them. The shelter was overwhelmed and was closed. The police will be involved and there is likely to be a criminal prosecution on animal cruelty and neglect charges.
At this stage I don’t have any more information. The headline caught my eye because of the extraordinary number of dead cats which is absolutely shocking. In fact it is mind blowing. If I was asked, I would think before I decided to prosecute this man. I would put him through a psychiatric evaluation because he must have what I would term mental health issues and punishing him may not be the right thing which might sound crazy but it may be true.
I don’t have a picture or further details at this time. If I find a photo and more information I’ll publish it. The story comes time.com via Associated Press via The Dispatch.
Thank god for animal shelters in his area that don’t practice no-kill! Or he would have had somewhere to take them to that wouldn’t kill them. All the no-kill shelters were already full up so he had no choice but to “save them” because nobody else would or could. Let’s thank all those that promote no-kill shelter policies for creating these scenarios every day now.
Just try to give a cat or even kitten away today, see how far you get. You can’t even find people willing to take them for barn-cats anymore, even they are full-up. Craigslist is chock-full of people looking for homes for unwanted FREE barn-cats because they have nowhere else to dump them. Unless you consider dumping tame cats into the wilds and into traffic under ASPCA’s, HSUS’, Maddies Fund 100-million cat challenge, and ACA’s RTF (Return to Field) programs as yet another wonderful and humane option, as you and they all do.
YOU caused this.
None of you are too bright, any of you. I hope you all rot in your respective hells with tormented nightmares for an eternity knowing YOU are the direct cause of these things happening on a daily basis now. Because you “love” cats so much, don’t you. Bunch of spineless and heartless ignorant useless bastards is what you really all are.
Go ahead, “pull” some more animals from kill-shelters to “save them” — right into a fate that is FAR worse than a humane death. Because that makes you feel good about your useless and heartless selves, no matter how a cat suffers to death from your perverted concept of “love”.
My biggest worry is that this obviously very mentally disturbed person would go right back out and do the same thing all over again because this form of hoarding is a compulsion that the person cannot just decide to stop as they are not in their right mind similar to sexual predators and pedophiles. I have seen episodes on the TV show Hoarders showing heartbreaking situations similar to this, obviously it is extreme animal cruelty but the hoarder is so ill and deluded that they think they are doing good for the animals and it was shown that when animal control raided them they had to threaten to take the hoarder straight to jail if they don’t surrender the animals to them on the spot. As an example some of the cat’s eyes had dropped out due to the amount of ammonia from the urine from the hoarder neglecting the litter boxes and dead cats stored in the freezer. Yes, the hoarder needs help but they have to be stopped from harming any more animals at the same time, that means being convicted of felony animal cruelty so they start getting it that they are not humanitarians but animal abusers. A sentence should require mandatory treatment/counseling for the hoarding with follow up to make sure they do not harm any more animals similar to checking in with parole or probation officers. It should also be mandatory that they register with convicted animal abuser registries similar to our nationwide convicted pedophile registeries so that shelters and rescues can check for prior animal abuse convictions. Several states already have this registry.
There but for the grace of God go I. I have the ability to limit myself to 6. However, I wish I could rescue every cat and dog in the world.
Yes, I agree. This is surely a symptom of something having gone wrong. There are too many cases like this. Is it a sign that the domestication of the cat has gone wrong? We must be able to do better than this.