Animal shelter crowded after 'extreme' cat hoarding bust

 By Blair Tellers

In the wake of an "extreme" bust occurring Friday that revealed an estimated 80 to 100 cats were hoarded in a non-residential facility in San Martin, the Santa Clara County Animal Shelter has skyrocketed into feline overload.

The discovery was made Sept. 1 following complaints of a pungent odor surrounding the facility in San Martin, according to Albert Escobar, program manager for Santa Clara County Animal Care and Control.

"It wasn't actually a person's home," said Escobar, who described the hoarder as an elderly man. "He had these cats in an alternative location in San Martin." ..."  More

Dog Warden, Humane Society Refuse To Help In Cat Hoarding Case

By: Candice Lee 

CHILLICOTHE, Ohio--After getting a call from a concerned neighbor, Chillicothe police confiscated 44 cats and one dog Friday from a home on East 5^th Street.

All the animals were jammed into pet carriers with no food or water.

But it wasn't the Ross County Humane Society that came to the rescue.

"They told us they weren't able to help us ... they had no means necessary to house the animals and no way to transport them and no way to better care for them ... that we needed to find an alternate method to do that," explained Public Information Officer Bud Lytle.

Chief Roger Moore called on the North Fork Animal Clinic to help get the cats into better condition.

Veterinarian Blake Lloyd examined the cats.

"As a clinic, we decided we could step up and house the cats for however long we needed to. We weren’t really sure how long that would be, and it seems it might be a little while, but we are taking good care of them," said Lloyd.

NBC4 went to the humane society to find out why it could not help.

Pam Longlott is the manager and said without a humane officer, it can't legally take animals.

She said those powers rest with the police department and the Ross County sheriff's office.

The small, nonprofit shelter can only hold 16 to 20 cats, she said.

"We’ve worked hard with vets to keep healthy, adoptable cats. And anything over, we have found in the past, you get a room full of sick animals," explained Longlott.

Now in the hands of a private vet, something unheard of in rescue cases such as this, Officer Lytle says any medical treatment must be done via court order since the hoard is "evidence" in the alleged animal cruelty case.

Between court time and expenses incurred to nurse the cats back to health, taxpayers could end up footing the bill.

Lytle said something must be done before another hoard is discovered.

"We’re stuck at an impasse. If this was to happen again tomorrow, we would be stuck at the same impasse that we were in this situation. And we can’t continue to call on private veterinarians. That’s how they make a living," Lytle said..."  Link & video

An Interview with Gail Steketee, PhD, on Hoarding and OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder)

(from 2009)

By:  David Van Nuys, Ph.D.

"...David: So how did you come to be interested in OCD and hoarding, in particular?

Gail Steketee: Well, the OCD part came many, many years ago, I think probably more than 30 at this point - or at least pushing 30 - when I worked as a young clinician on a complicated case of a young man who had been unable to complete his medical career because he had extensive washing routines. And I enjoyed very much working with him. He had a very successful outcome and I was hooked in doing, at that time, the behavioral treatments, the exposure and response prevention that we did for OCD, and still do very successfully for OCD. The hoarding interest came from my work with Dr. Randy Frost, who's at Smith College. Randy became interested in looking at hoarding symptoms because he had been giving an OCD seminar to his undergraduate students at Smith, and one of the students had picked out hoarding as a class project to work on; in fact, I think there were several students working on it. And when they put an ad in the newspaper to try to do some interviews and collect some information from people that they called pack rats, they got a very large number of responses. And as they collected the information they became more and more interested and aware of the magnitude of the problem and the prevalence of the problem.

David: It sounds like they were shocked that they received so big a response.

Gail Steketee: Yes, they were definitely surprised. And as he and his students continued to work on it - and Randy and I had been working on other OCD-related research - he finally said to me that I think that we can't ignore this, I think it's very important. And so I started paying more and more attention, and I agreed with him very quickly that this is a remarkably common problem and can be quite a severe one. In fact, the thing that disturbs us all is when it's life threatening and that does happen to some people; fortunately it's rare..."  More

70+ Animals Seized In County

By Rusty Garrett

Animals seized in an investigation of suspected animal cruelty in Logan County have been brought to the Sebastian County Humane Society shelter in Fort Smith.

Logan County Sheriff Steve Smith said Wednesday a warrant was served at a rural location between Scranton and Subiaco and more than 70 animals were taken into custody. Action was taken in response to a complaint the Sebastian County Humane Society, which investigates complaints of animal cruelty in the area, forwarded to the sheriff’s department last week.

Smith said most of the animals were dogs. Some were in pens, but many were running loose, Smith said.

“It’s mostly a neglect-type case,” Smith said. “They had too many animals to keep up with.”

Smith said an investigation is continuing and the incident will be forwarded to Logan County prosecutors for appropriate action. No one was taken into custody Wednesday. Smith said he anticipated at least one person will be charged...."  More

Storing memories: Frances Boudreaux of Ball writes book about mother's hoarding obsession

Written by Jodi Belgard 

 "You would want Mama to clean your house," Frances Boudreaux said as she sat upright on the edge of the sofa in her home.

Sitting there with her, listening to her story, one could only view Boudreaux's home as a stark contrast of her mother's home -- the home in which Boudreaux spent the first 19 years of her life...

...Boudreaux, the oldest of four kids, didn't grow up with the luxury of her mother cleaning much of anything. But she remembers being young and seeing her mother wash dishes with water so hot and scrubbing so vigorously that her hands would throb and nearly bleed.

She remembers watching her mother pour extra water into the washing machine because she believed the clothes wouldn't rinse clean if she didn't. She remembers the abrasive scent of bleach on everything and in every room...

...Christine "Chrissie" O'Neal, her mother, was a clinically depressed, obsessive-compulsive, schizophrenic (undifferentiated type) hoarder who lived the prime of her life in a society that simply didn't acknowledge severe mental illness.

At some point in O'Neal's life, the compulsion to clean had given way to the compulsion to hoard, and that's what Boudreaux remembers..."  More

Woman charged with animal cruelty: 'I have too many dogs'

by BEN THOMPSON & GREG ARGOS

A Shelby homeowner faces charges of animal cruelty after Cleveland County Animal Control workers removed up to 75 dogs from her home Wednesday.

Carolyn Owens, 61, spoke exclusively to NewsChannel 36 shortly after she posted bond.

"I'm the first to tell you I have too many dogs," she said.

Owens said she's collected stray dogs from the neighborhood, hoping to keep them from being euthanized.."  More

Jeffco releases arrest warrant in rabbit seizure

By Liz Navratil

An arrest warrant released today revealed new details about the "deplorable" conditions that prompted Jefferson County sheriff's deputies to seize 193 rabbits from an Arvada rancher.

The warrant says there were 75 percent more rabbits living in the home on West 75th Avenue than was acceptable and that some of the animals had "tacky gums," a sign of dehydration.

Sheriff's deputies also allege "many of the rabbits' coats are so severely matted that they cannot urinate or defacate without extreme difficulty" and that there were "unacceptably high ammonia levels caused by excessive urine."

The rabbits' owner, Debe Bell, has been charged with numerous counts of animal cruelty and is due to appear in court.."  More