Seriously though, WTF? Three people lived in that home (an old lady, one of her kids and their spouse) with hundreds of cats, most of which were found dead. The crews had to wear hazmat uniforms and oxygen tanks because of the ammonia levels, and then they had to be decontaminated as they came out! There were INCHES of cat poo all over every single flat surface. PEOPLE ACTUALLY LIVED THERE?!
My news program showed a pick up truck with garbage bags filling the box. There were more than 200 dead cats in those garbage bags, and the ones that are still alive will likely be euthanized because of disease. This lady, with her house full of dead cats, continued “adopting” strays. A neighbor came on said she “knew there was a problem, but didn’t know it was that bad”. The news anchor, who was sent up the hill for her safety, said the stink was overbearing.
And people willingly lived there. Gross!
Poor, poor kitties. :hugs her own (ONE) cat: Stupid humans.
It’s funny that your immediate reaction is to feel sorry for the cats. Mine is to wonder what happened to those people to make them that way, mental illness is my assumption. So yeah, I guess I’d say poor people and poor cats. Sounds like a mess.
[Ren Höek]Filthy catbox! Are you trying to kill me man?[/RH] I suppose it puts Dusty’s catbox in perspective but I have to feel sorry for everyone involved. Phoenix seemed to be going throug a period where there was always a new case of the city having to do that with a house.
Well, there were hundreds of cats, but only three people. I’m not entirely sure how the math works out on that.
I agree with you, though. This isn’t just a matter of slovenlyness. This is a full-on hoarding disorder, times three (or at least one hoarder and up to two people who really must have had no where else to go.)
Your assumption would be right. Animal hoarding is a little-understood mental illness; when our animal control officers get a hoarding call, they know they’re going to be going out on some of their most horrific duty.
One memorable case in our county a year or so ago involved an elderly woman whose house was full of buckets of human feces: the water had been turned off in her house, and she had nowhere else to use the bathroom, and it didn’t occur to her to dump the buckets outside. The floor of the house was covered several inches thick in animal feces and other garbage. There’s a picture from the case that haunts me, of a cat sitting in a tiny carrying case, and the cat is pressed against the case’s top by the thick layer of feces on which it crouches. It obviously hadn’t been let out of that cage for months or years, had just had food pushed through the mesh door to it.
Yeah, they mentioned that in the news cast, but not on the website.
Wow, Daniel, thanks for the link. I found (and read, how terrible) all kinds of old articles I dug up while looking for this story, and none of them have ever mentioned anything like that. Sorry if I offended anyone by caring more about the kitties. While I find it terribly unlikely that all three of them suffer from this illness, I understand now how truly devastating this situation is, and I hope they all get the help they need.