It began with neighbors complaining about odors coming from the unkempt Uniontown home last month. Humane officers donned biohazard suits and breathing masks before entering, and emerged with 14 cats, six ferrets, four rabbits, one boxer dog and one red-eared slider turtle.
But inside among the feces, garbage and debris were nine dead animals, including seven cats.
Similar scenarios of animal hoarders play out about a dozen times a year in Allegheny County. Authorities have varying opinions about not only how hoarding should be handled, but even how to define it.
A group called the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium, affiliated with the Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in Grafton, Mass., has been studying the problem for 10 years. Its 2006 report estimates that as many as 250,000 animals per year are acquired by animal hoarders.
The consortium’s report identifies four characteristics of animal hoarding:
• Failure to provide minimal standards of sanitation, space, nutrition and veterinary care.
• An inability to see that level of care is creating problems for animals and humans.
• Obsessive attempts to maintain and add to the numbers of animals even while conditions get progressively worse.
• Denying that living conditions are creating a problem for animals and people
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