We’ve got three cats. On the other hand, there are three of us, counting me, my wife, and my daughter. So is Pepper Mill crazy because we have three cats, or does the fact that we have one cat per person make us all safely sane?
In 40 years of marriage we have generally had 3 poodles and two cats at any given time, plus assorted fish, birds, rabbits and what-have-you. Mrs Retief likes all kinds of animals, while I just like cats. However the thankless bstds ignore me (who feeds them) and follow Mrs Retief around like she is the second coming. I never have to wonder where she is, just check where all the noses are pointing. As to the OP, definetly not crazy, she is a witch, yes but not a crazy one, a sexy one.
Talk to the animals… why yes, we do that, and their own way they talk back. The two parrots we have even speak very clear Dutch, and will tell us when they want to get out of their cage and sit in a tree for a while.
My friend had 24 of them just south of SF, Calif. She said she had to stay home cause no one would babysit them. She must have a lot more now.
My city limits the number of cats/canines you can have to 4 mix or match. You might check your city code.
My family has 2 cats at home that we adopted from the animal shelter about 5 years ago. We’re all pretty sane, but the cats can get kind of crazy sometimes. One of them is an expert hunter and loves to bring home all sorts of “treats”. He’s brought several live birds into the house. The other one is kind of stupid and tends to spaz out on occasion. She was kind of the inspiration for my user name! But she’s absolutely adorable, so it makes makes up for her lack of intelligence.
One of my boyfriend’s roommates at school has 3 cats. This girl is wacky and pretty heavy into drugs. When she smokes pot (which is at least once a day, sometimes more) she always has the cats in her room with the door shut. I don’t know exactly how cats are affected by pot smoke, but it seems to make them pretty crazy. They’re always running around and fighting with each other. This girl never cleans out the litter box, so it always reeks. I’m usually a cat person, but these three cats get on my last nerve. Thankfully, my boyfriend has a new roommate for next semester.
I want to call people’s attention to these excellent links. These articles, while academic in tone, are fascinating stuff.
As a humane society worker, about once or twice a year I get the pleasure of dealing with the fallout of an animal hoarder case. Fortunately for me, I’m not one of the frontline animal control officers or shelter workers: I’m not the one out there taking photographs of feces-covered floors, removing animals from tiny cages packed tight (and I mean packed tight) with urine-soaked newspapers, looking at beds rotted through with human and animal waste, cleaning up the half-eaten carcasses of animals that starved to death and became food for their starving brethren. The photographs from these cases will give you nightmares.
Are the people who hard animals crazy? In my unqualified opinion, hell yes. People who refuse to sign their sick-unto-death animals over to the animal shelter because we might euthanize them – people who genuinely believe that the seventy dogs with shit-encrusted fur were better off living in unbelievable filth – people who will use buckets and pots around the house as toilets once their own plubming goes out, and never empty the buckets – these folks are insane.
Animal hoarder cases are terrible to deal with. You don’t want to send a senile, 70-year-old lady* to prison for being crazy, but you also don’t want her to be able to continue her unintentional torturing animals to death. Social Services is often loathe to intervene in the affairs of an adult. If the hoarder refuses to sign the animals over, you can have to keep them at the animal shelter for weeks, months, or occasionally years as the case drags through court, using up cages that might otherwise be used for adopting out animals, and cruelly keeping the animals alive in a cold cage when their likeliest fate will be euthanasia at the end of the case.
And if you prosecute a hoarder, or if you gain court-ordered psychiatric intervention, the most common reaction by the hoarder is to pull up stakes, move somewhere else, and start the horrible process all over again.
That said, obviously not everyone with lots of pets is a hoarder. I myself know someone who’s kept up to 30 cats in her house; she does this by devoting every spare penny of her income to providing them with proper food and veterinary care, by having many, many litterboxes, and by running an informal adoption ring out of her house. She may have unusual priorities, but she’s certainly not living in filth, nor is she abusing the animals.
However, if you suspect that somebody might be starting to hoard animals – especially if it looks like the habit might be getting beyond their control (i.e., their house is starting to really reek of animal waste, or their animals aren’t going to the vet, or there are multiple pregnant animals or multiple litters of animals hanging around a nonbreeder’s house), please try to get them help.
There’s a lot of money out there now for helping folks get animals spayed or neutered at reduced cost, and that’s a good starting point. Call your local humane society, find out what sort of help they can offer. If they don’t have such a program, encourage them to get one – you might even mention the DJ&T Foundation, a national organization that funds such programs in local shelters.
Try to find a way to get the person to reduce the number of animals they keep to a level that they can provide full care for. For some folks, that’s no animals at all; for a rare few, that’s thirty animals or even more. Help them set up a plan by which they won’t exceed this number. Let them know where the local animal shelter is.
No, of course having multiple cats isn’t evidence of mental illness – I think we all know that, including the OP writer, and that’s not what I’m talking about. But the mental illness that surrounds animal hoarding is terribly harmful to both hoarder and the hoarded.
Daniel
Good advice, Daniel.
My boyfriend and I have two cats. The female wants nothing to do with the male, and I think the male gets bored. I would love to get him a kitty to play with and lord over (he really wants to be the boss of the female, but she just ignores him and I can tell it drives him nuts), but we’ve been afraid of having more than two cats. Many of you seem stable and own many animals, so probably it’s a laughable concern of mine. I guess if the opportunity arises for a new cat, I’ll welcome the little critter.
Delete “with one cat” and you still have a true statement. 
Daniel- so true. I had to look into the complaints of one of these, who though the HS and everyone else was “out to get her”. Oddly we found out that the HS’s “officer” who was a cashiered ex-cop, was indeed, a customer service nitemare kinda guy, who they had to fire. So- altho yes, she was paranoid- she had some cause to be. “Cashiered Cops” aren’t a good source for animal control officers anyway, IMHO.
But she was also a loon of the second order, and had moved to the RV in the yard,so the cats got the entire house. Crazy. They got to her before the neglect really started though- she had just doubled the number of cats- I think to 80.
However, back to the OP. No- the “crazy” part doesn’t start until soemthing like 10 or a dozen. (not counting breeders or that last batch of kittens). If you have more than 8- think carefully where this is leading you.
OH great. I have OCD and I love cats. Does this mean I’ll be a hoarder?
:eek:
Me and my SO have 3 cats and 3 dogs. I also have a horse, but she is boarded at a horse barn.
I had two cats and a dog when I met my SO, and he had two dogs - are men that have more than two dogs mentally ill?
I moved in with him, and during our time together one of my cats passed away (in 1996) and later that year we got another cat to keep cat #1 company. Then last August I found a kitten while bike riding - the thought of finding her another home never crossed either of our minds. We knew we could handle one more cat.
Our animals see the vet regularly, litterboxes get cleaned, we fenced in a large portion of our yard for the dogs, the cats stay indoors.
Well, my sister has several cats, she is not mentally ill but she is nuts. She also has several dogs, hedghogs, a husband and has had goats . Next she wants to get a cow.
I have 3 cats…And as luck would have it I am a pretty sane person. Also have a fish tank with actual fish in it. Had 2 rabbits until about a week ago when some damned neighbor hood dog broke into their cage and killed them. Maybe some people are nuts for having so many pets and maybe some people just like animals.
Heh – I seriously doubt it. All the same, if you find yourself with eight or ten cats, you may want to talk to somebody about it, make sure it’s not symptomatic. Animal hoarding isn’t really understood very well; while one theory is that it’s linked to OCD, there are several other theories floating around as well.
Daniel
Are women who have more than two cats mentally ill?
Well, no, but women who think they are more than two cats are mentally ill.
Definitely two cats is better than one. A single young kitten is, how to say, filled with evil energy. With two, at least they can play with each other.
We are at a count of six now, owing to a recent rescue of mom and two kittens. With two of us, they have definitely divided into three of “my cats”, two which claim my wife, and one who two-times each of us. So, while my wife is sane, I am perhaps a bit looney. 
Of course, at 5:30am, they all love me (feeding time), and they wake me up to prove it.
I love how the husband gets worked in after the hedghog, but before the goats… So, which one makes her nuts? The husband?
My husband and I have 3 cats and 2 dogs…They are all spoiled and extremely well cared for. Am I crazy? Probably…I can’t help it though. I love my furry kids:)
Yes. No. Maybe. I dunno.
:::whispering::::
We’ll get back with you on this.
How about this lady: http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/128/metro/Dead_diseased_cats_found_in_woman_s_2d_apartment+.shtml
Overall, though, it may have more to do with quality than quantity. I have one former friend who only has one cat, due to rules in her apartment building, but boy, is she sure nutty about that one cat. The cat is her “child”, to the point where she is obsessed with the cat’s health, including mental health. Over time, I heard about how her cat was depressed, possibly had ADD and OCD (again, the cat, not the woman) and had asthma, even though more than one vet said none of these were true.
Oh, and I have 2 cats. I try to maintain the same level of aloofness with them as they do with me.
A few minutes ago I saw a news story on KTVU about a 76 year old Oakland woman who was found to have six dozen cats in her house. Neighbors had called police to complain about the strong stench. Animal control came over and removed cages filled with cats.
Come to think about it this explains a lot about some neighbors I had growing up. Wonderful people, had about maybe 6 cats at any given time (most were indoors). They’d bitch and complain about being broke and then go buy the most expensive ass cat food they could find … not to mention the vet bills.