Margo Cicci vividly remembers the visits she made in August to a Mount Lebanon house where more than 80 cats were left behind after their owner was evicted. A strong stench emanated from the home, and she found cats in traps left unattended for hours at a time.
“The tenant was evicted and when she left, she left close to a hundred cats in the duplex,” Cicci says. “When I went down, there were cats in traps outside, uncovered in the pouring down rain. They were so scared.”
Cicci — a member of the Pittsburgh Feral Cat Movement, an animal-protection group — learned more about the situation over the next few days. The house’s landlord had hired Big Daddy Wildlife Removal, a private company, to remove the cats. Cicci was told by the landlord that the trapping company was working with a humane officer from local no-kill shelter Animal Friends to determine which cats could be saved.
“We were told that as the cats were trapped, they were going to Animal Friends, that they were going there to be evaluated and decisions would be made at that point,” Cicci says. “We felt more comfortable with what was happening because we figured they must be working with this trapping company to make sure the cats that are friendly and need medical attention are going to get that.”
But a week later, Cicci learned that most of the cats were dead. According to Animal Friends, 10 of the 82 cats found at the home were rescued. The rest were euthanized.
“It’s horrible to think that they all died,” says Cicci. “There is a problem that a humane agent was out here and only removed a few cats. They allowed a third party to do the trapping and remove the cats. And as far as we know, no charges have been filed against the owner of the cats. That’s what we’re upset about.”
According to the Humane Society of the United States, nearly 250,000 animals each year are victims of animal hoarding. But despite the frequency of cases like the one in Mount Lebanon, animal shelters and judicial systems have a hard time handling hoarding situations.
Shelters are often already filled to capacity and unable to deal with a large influx of animals at one time. Local authorities often learn of hoarding situations only when they’ve reached a critical level and the animals are already too far gone. And in general, laws aren’t in place to regulate cat ownership, leaving these animals to fend for themselves.
“Hoarding situations are very, very challenging because in most cases the animals are very sick,” says Kristen Lane, director of marketing and communications at the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society. “If a hoarder has 30 or 40 cats, of course those cats are going to infect each other. So in a hoarding case there is probably going to be a lot of euthanizations, because the cats are going to be very sick.”
“We’ve seen a number of these hoarding cases throughout the region,” says Animal Friends spokesperson Kathleen Beaver. “And that’s what’s so difficult is when it gets to the point where you have 30, 40, 80 cats, you know these cats are probably not in the best of health, probably not as socialized as they can be and shelters run out of options really quickly.”
In the Mount Lebanon case, local police were notified of the situation and contacted Animal Friends to follow up on the case and ultimately decide whether to file charges against the owner of the cats.
“An agreement was made with Animal Friends that any of the cats that were in good enough health or could be adopted, those cats were turned over to Animal Friends,” says Aaron Lauth, deputy chief of the Mount Lebanon department. “And the ones that were not, unfortunately, had to be euthanized, and then it was up to the humane officer — seeing the condition of the animals taken out by the private service — to file charges.”
Cicci and fellow cat activist Becky Morrow, a veterinarian, contend that Animal Friends did not adequately inspect the health of the animals at the home. Based on their own interactions with the animals that were in cages when they arrived, Cicci and Morrow say that many of the cats were friendly and socialized, not feral.
“They looked fairly healthy,” says Morrow. “In hoarding scenarios, the first thing and the most prevalent thing we worry about is upper-respiratory infections, loss of eyes. And we didn’t see any of that.”
Morrow also worries about Animal Friends’ ability to file charges against the cat-owner.
“This was a clear-cut cruelty case,” says Morrow. “The evidence in a case like this is going to be the cats. There’s a chain of custody that needs to be followed, so by sending the cats out to Big Daddy, they broke the chain of custody. You can’t use those cats as evidence now. They not only didn’t charge her, but really damaged their own case if they would try to charge her.”
Animal Friends says it was actually first alerted to the situation in Mount Lebanon in March 2013. At the time, the group was unable to investigate further because it could not obtain a warrant to search the home, and there was no evidence of animal cruelty on the outside of the house.
When Animal Friends humane officer Kathy Hecker revisited the site in August, after the cat-owner had been evicted, she was immediately able to collect enough evidence to file charges, and Animal Friends says it plans to do so in the future.
“We essentially did what we would do in any situation like this,” says Joanne Moore, Animal Friends’ director of outreach and therapeutic programming. “It needs to be understood that the landlord had made all of these arrangements. He was looking for trap and removal. He did not indicate that he wanted investigation.”
“When the landlord contracted with [the private trapping company], the offer we put out there to them is we can take any that aren’t medically compromised, that are kittens, that are manageable,” says Animal Friends spokesperson Beaver. “We weren’t there making some of these decisions, it was really Big Daddy making some of these decisions.”
Big Daddy did not respond to requests for comment. Animal Friends has two years to file charges, but if charges aren’t filed, Cicci and Morrow worry the cats’ owner and others like her will continue hoarding in the future, leading to the death of many more cats.
“Our big thing is that this woman left with five to 10 cats. She clearly has a problem that needs addressed, and hoarding has a 100 percent chance of relapse if you don’t get serious intervention,” Cicci says. “I’ve second-guessed everything I did, but the only thing I can do is make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Unfortunately, the situation in Mount Lebanon is a common one.
“When you have an overcrowding of cats, it’s really common for them to have a disease that’s contagious. In most cases, cats in hoarding situations have not been protected from any disease,” says Janice Barnard, program director at the Animal Rescue League of Western Pennsylvania. “In some cases, they’ll have a humane agent and a veterinarian go on site to make a determination and they’ll decide the cats aren’t adoptable. And that’s pretty common.”
But situations like this often don’t get the same attention as animal-cruelty cases involving dogs, like pit-bull fighting. And there aren’t the same laws in place to regulate cat ownership as there are for dogs. For instance, cats do not have to be licensed.
“Cats are absolutely a secondary citizen. I hate saying people don’t value them as much, because we definitely do here,” Barnard says. “I’ve seen cases where they throw the book at [hoarders] the first time, and other cases where the person keeps coming back over and over and over again.”
Like a lot of municipalities, Mount Lebanon doesn’t have a limit on the number of animals a person can own, so law-enforcement officials often can’t intervene until animals are in clear danger.
“The laws in Pennsylvania related to animals don’t have much teeth,” says Barnard. “People are demanding that animal-related laws have more bite to them.”
But local legislators are working to strengthen animal-cruelty laws. In 2013, state Rep. Dom Costa introduced legislation that would increase penalties for animal cruelty.
“A society is measured by the way it takes care of creatures who can’t take care of themselves,” says Costa. “You need to step up the punishments. If you’re going to abuse animals, you don’t need to have them.”
He’s also considering creating a state-wide statute to limit the number of animals a person can own.
“Ordinances are allowed to limit the number of pets you have, so I think we’re going to have to look at a state statute,” Costa says. “The hoarders, I believe in their heart they mean well, but there needs to more penalties. Prior to the last 10 years, the movement toward protecting cats hasn’t been as visible and I think people are starting to generate a lot more attention. We need to put more money behind enforcement.”
But others say these laws do little to address animal cruelty in hoarding situations because the people involved are suffering from a mental illness.
“There are lots and lots of laws on the books, but they’re only for people who are willing to abide by them. It’s a human and animal tragedy combined,” says Patti Strand, president of the National Animal Interest Alliance. “Every jurisdiction has all kinds of laws on the books that are never enforced. This is not going to be a high priority compared to monitoring previous rapists. There’s only so many dollars.”
And even if laws are available in jurisdictions to penalize hoarders, there are ethical considerations involved in prosecuting someone with a mental illness.
“What do you do when you’re dealing with a person that has a mental disorder? It’s unusual when a hoarder is prosecuted,” Strand says. “It’s just a very peculiar, weird, sad, tragic situation. You recognize at some point that you’re not looking at someone who’s being willfully cruel.”
As for the criticism Animal Friends has received in this case, Strand says its handling of the case was common when it comes to hoarding situations
“By the time you recognize something is going on, you’re probably going to have some animals that are in bad shape already,” Strand says. “Often if they are euthanizing the excess, it’s because there isn’t space in the local shelters. They’re going to retain the cats that have the best chance of a successful adoption, which would not be the feral cats.
“They’re making decisions that may look cold to the outside world, but that are reasonable when you’re trying to do the best job you can with limited resources and a limited community to adopt.”
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2014.
