For all I know, my mother may have suffered from a variety of psychiatric and emotional disorders including hoarder personality that she may have actually had throughout her life. Unfortunately, I will never know if this was the case, for in my opinion she was never properly diagnosed even while seeing a therapist for about five years prior to her death just last August. What also impeded her proper diagnosis, was the fact that she never consented to sign an authorization that would have allowed me, her own daughter, any disclosure or intervention of her clinical care due to the strict, stringent Hipaa Privacy Laws until only a few months prior to her death; then it was to little, too late.
Upon looking and reflecting back over the years, I do indeed think my mother may have had indications of emotional imbalances, such as bi-polar, as many of the classic symptoms associated with this condition were those my mother demonstrated. Of course, like many people, none in the family, that is my then living grandmother, nor I realized that my mother's behavior were indicators of emotional disorders. As the saying goes, sometimes you don't recognize the problem that is right in front of you. My mother had the mood swings of the highs and lows that most people with the condition of bi-polar have. One minute she could be in a state of wonderful happiness, the next moment, something would trigger her off and she would have child-like temper tantrums fits, or bouts of extreme sadness. She was an extravagant shopper, spending money well beyond her financial means, and creating devastating credit card bills, and often borrowing money from just about everyone she knew just to pay these bills off. And yes, there were also indications of her "collecting" things, typical of the hoarder personality as well. Inwardly she knew that her financial status wasn't exactly in the category of the very rich, yet she made herself feel rich by buying enough clothes to start her own store, yet hardly ever wore them. Her extravagant buying behavior was geared mainly not only upon herself but also with acquaintances or friends, but never with her own family members. When buying gifts for people she knew they would always, but always be very expensive items, in other words, it was as if she were trying to "show" off her generosity to others.
Whatever emotional problems my mother did have throughout her life, they were kept at bay, so to say, as long as she continued to live this type of lifestyle. Then her world turned and was to change, beginning in 1986, when her mother, my grandmother, died. From the time we had moved into the apartment of which I still reside, back in 1961 and up until 1986, my mother never paid rent, or utilities, nor helped out in any of the other daily living expenses, for as I see it, she was too wrapped up in her heiress-type lifestyle. Now all of a sudden, the real world hit her, she could no longer live the way she had all her life up until then and she had to take on some real responsibilities. No longer able to pay off any of her credit card bills, she had to declare bankruptcy as she was over $45,000.00 in debt. Then the next blow came only a few years later, and she was downsized from her job. It was the combination of these two factors, that whatever emotional problems she had all her life began to surface. It took me many years to realize, that in effect, my mother never really grew up, never took on any responsibilities in life, and instead had relied and thrown off her responsibilities onto her mother for most of her life, even into adulthood. Now with her mother gone, she now focused her attention on me, and of course, at the time, I didn't even realize it. You see, at the time I was struggling with my own problems, as I had developed a case of with panic disorder with agoraphobia and at one time, had been completely housebound due to this condition. I think you can gather, from what I've said here so far however, that one of my mother's emotional disorders was that of hoarding. However, now that she wasn't able to spend money to "collect" things, she switched her attention of what she collected onto something else: collecting pets.
From the time we had moved into the apartment back in 1961, when I was only five and a half years old, there had always been pet cats with my mother getting our first cat in 1962. The number of cats we had was a fairly reasonable number, yet it didn't occur to me at the time that my mother did have one odd behavior pattern. If, as time passed, one of the older cats died, she would bring the cat to Bide-A-Wee for its cremation, but she'd never came home empty-handed, for upon opening up the pet traveling case out would come a cute little kitten, and she would say, "This is a replacement for Friskey," ...or Biddy, or whomever the cat was that had recently died. The pet population was up until 1992 fairly manageable, for at that time we had nine cats, including an unfixed female cat. I kept after my mother to get that cat spayed but she didn't, and often told me that since we weren't to have any more cats, there was no need to get her fixed. That was big mistake number one. Then not long afterwards, a neighbor came by who had found a stray cat roaming around. He was a friendly cat, and no doubt had once belonged to someone, but was probably subjected by its owner of being dumped onto the streets as no longer being wanted. I repeatedly said to this neighbor, that no, we just couldn't take anymore cats in, as I thought even nine was too many. The two of them, the neighbor and my mother did a real guilt trip number on me, saying, "Oh, it's only one more cat." I gave in, and in came the cat. It didn't take long to realize that this male cat wasn't fixed either. So here we had a pair of unfixed cats, and I think you can imagine what happened. Yes, I repeatedly told my mother to take at least one of the cats to be fixed, but she didn't. I wasn't able to take them myself, as I was dealing with my agoraphobia disorder, and while I was no longer housebound, I just wasn't able to make the trip to the vet as he was a distance away. There was absolutely nothing preventing my mother from taking the cats.
As you can guess, the first litter of six kittens was born in 1993, and if it had stopped at that one litter, it still could have been manageable, but it didn't. I did ask my circle of friends, who I knew were pet lovers, especially of cats, if they'd be interested in taking in one of the kittens, but none did. Taking the kittens and placing them up for adoption with a shelter was also out of the question, since none took in pets for free, often requiring a fee of at least $50.00 per pet, and our money situation just couldn't handle the expense. My mother did the suggestion of getting the male cats fixed first as they were less expensive to do, but, oops, missed one, so more kittens were born.
What happened next was a scenario of nightmares since the cat population kept growing and growing and quickly got completely out of control by 1996 when the population of cats reached near forty. Now even though I had my agoraphobia problem, I was still successfully getting my photography published, and developing my black and white film and prints, and doing indoor studio shots at home, but all that changed by the ever growing cat population. I had to stop developing my film and prints as I couldn't risk having the chemicals about with so many cats meandering around all over the place; then I had to stop doing my studio shots, as it could take me up to three hours to do a "set-up" and only minutes for the cats to wreck everything--then I even had to stop sending out my portfolios of work as I didn't have time any longer to work on them. It was now becoming a full-time job, trying to keep the house clean.
And what was my mother doing all this time? Absolutely nothing. My mother did nothing to help out with even the easiest and simplest of cleaning chores. She was leaving it all up to me. Now, even my hopes for ever trying to get over my own panic disorder was dashed as now I was tied to the apartment cleaning all the time to make sure our place was as odor free as possible. The only place I ever went to was the supermarket to buy a daily supply of cat food to feed all those cats. The worse "symptom" with my mother however, was starting to become more and more evident: she viewed this new "lifestyle" with so many cats as being normal, just one part of the signs and indications of a person who has hoarder personality.
Now before I go on with my article, I need to verify a few things about pet hoarding in general. The case of pet hoarding that my mother created was not the typical, classic form that most people are familiar with, when they hear stories of pet hoarders. One will often hear on the news of the discovery of a person who lives in a home or apartment with a more than normal number of pets, usually a hundred or more, where the pets in question are in terrible medical condition, starving, and the home may even have dead pets lying all around in various stages of decomposition. Besides the over-population of pets, the home itself is in horrendous condition with clutter all around making it a health hazard.
In an article, entitled "Behind Closed Doors: The Horrors of Animal Hoarding" which is on the Humane Society's website they give many excellent examples of what pet hoarding is all about:
..."For most people, the term "animal hoarding" conjures up images of an eccentric "cat lady." Despite the stereotype that collecting animals is simply a quirky behavior, recent research has pointed to a direct correlation between psychological problems and the tendency to hoard. "Hoarding is very often a symptom of a greater mental illness, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder. For most hoarders, it is likely that their actions are the result of a true pathology, even though they are still usually able to function quite well in society," says Randall Lockwood, HSUS vice president for Research and Educational Outreach."…
A further definition of a pet hoarder is as follows:
...."An animal hoarder must be distinguished from an animal fancier (who merely keeps an unusually large number of pets, but has the ability to care for all of them) or an animal breeder (who would have a large number of pets due to the business). The distinguishing feature is that a hoarder "fails to provide the animals with adequate food, water, sanitation, and veterinary care, and ... is in denial about this inability to provide adequate care." Along with other compulsive hoarding behaviours, it is linked in the DSM-IV to obsessive-compulsive disorder and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Alternatively, animal hoarding could be related to addiction, dementia, or even focal delusion."…
So yes, while we did have a large cat population, this was not the typical scenario that is found in pet hoarding situations. Our apartment wasn't cluttered, there wasn't pet filth all over the place, none of the cats had diseases or were sick, and their most certainly weren't dead, decomposing bodies of pets all over the place. But yes, I will admit the place smelled to high heaven despite my efforts of round the clock cleaning. So is it any wonder that in 2001 my mother and I faced our first eviction notice from our landlord? Not only did the place reek of pet odor, but by that year the cat population had zoomed up to a little over a hundred. Yes, you read right. All along, my mother still thought our lifestyle was normal, while I felt I was living in a virtual hell. I felt helpless due to my own panic disorder, and believe me, this situation wasn't helping my anxiety problems. My mother continued to live in some kind of perpetual denial that anything was wrong.
In 2001, my mother and I were lucky in getting a great lawyer to represent us. It was due to her and the efforts of a pet advocate who had ties with the media that we had news coverage of our "story". Not only that but the ASPCA had helped us out, by bringing their mobile van medical unit and came and took cats to be altered to prevent any more litters. People, having taken an interest in our story, came to our apt. to adopt our cats and many were placed into good new homes, but unfortunately not enough. In the meantime, our lawyer became completely exasperated and dumped us, no longer wishing to represent. She had expected that the two of us, my mother and myself would a round the clock, virtual 24-hour a day cleaning thing to fumigate our apt.out, yet my mother continued to do nothing. It was therefore up to me, to not only clean every waking moment of the day and night, but at the advice of our lawyer, to get rid of just about everything and anything that might be retaining pet odor. So I was getting rid of books, videos, furniture, etc, plus painting up the apt. from top to bottom, plus putting up and dealing with people coming into our apt. as early as 8:00 in the morning, to as late as 12 midnight, to view our cats to adopt. We did get another lawyer, but he didn't do half as much as our previous lawyer had, still we at least had some legal representation.
When my mother appeared at court on June 11, 2001 she signed a stipulation agreement in which we were to have no more than two cats, yet as of that day we still had many cats as leftovers from the ones that hadn't been adopted out. With the passing of time however, our much covered story became forgotten, and the number of people interested in adopting our cats came to a halt. We were still "stuck" with at least 48 cats. Now it became my task to continue to find more homes to bring the cat population drastically down to be in agreement of the stipulation either that or be considered as breaching that stipulation. I then became computer savvy a year later, teaching myself and using the computers at my local library. Immediately I saw the benefit of this knowledge, and from 2002 until 2006 it almost became a daily "mission" to reach out to pet rescuers and/or shelters who would be willing to take in many of the cats. I wasn't only in contact with pet rescuers in the New York area, but was reaching out to people in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey. It had been my hope that if each place I had taken at least one cat each, then the problem would have been solved. No one helped however.
In the meantime, my mother's personality further deteriorated. Now it was becoming apparent that she was suffering from a severe, deep form of depression, which for all I know may have been triggered by having reduced the cat population. She lacked motivation of any kind, spent most of her time just sitting on the sofa staring into space or sleeping and didn't take the slightest interest in anything around her. Pet hoarders often feel that only they can take care of the pets, as stated in this five page PDF file which can be downloaded from the Tufts.edc website:
..."Perhaps the most prominent psychological feature of these individuals is that pets (and other possessions) become central to the hoarder's core identity. The hoarder develops a strong need for control, and just the thought of losing an animal can produce an intense grief-like reaction…."
It was then that I suggested to her that she needed to seek therapy to help her, if anything, to allow her the chance to verbalize her depression and perhaps indicate the effect it was having on her of having to get rid of the cats to a professional. As I have previously mentioned however, she never signed a proxy to allow me any intervention on her clinical care until the last few months of her life, and knowing my mother, she wasn't exactly one to tell anyone, not even me, precisely just how she felt both emotionally or medically. I did just about everything possible to try and have some voice over her needs and care, but no one would listen to me, not even when I tried to alert and tell her primary care doctor, her social worker or her therapist that my mother was also demonstrating the destructive bulimic behavior and had been doing so for about two years. I even wrote letters to the executive director of the hospital she was going to for all her medical and psychiatric needs. All I ever got back was letters telling me that due to the Hipaa Privacy Laws my mother's clinical care could not be disclosed to me. As it turned out, there was a reason for her bulimic behavior. After being hospitalized in 2005 it was discovered she had a cancerous tumor in her esophagus, but I can't help wondering, if I had, had intervention in her care and my voice had been listened to, that maybe her condition would have been diagnosed sooner.
In the meantime, during these years, I was living in chronic fear of being discovered that we did indeed still have more than the two cats we were allowed to have according to that stipulation agreement, and I was continuing my efforts in getting the population of cats further reduced. My fears were justified, and on March 2, 2006, my mother and I received our second notice and once more eviction proceedings were against us. My mother's mental and physical state due to the cancer was worse than ever, she had become a virtual vegetable and non-functional. Single-handedly I had to arrange finding a lawyer, and speed up the process of finding places for the cats. I did manage to get the cat population down to only two cats by May, with the fantastic help of several pet rescuers who were each willing to take a good number of the cats. I also had to in the months to come endure the numerous court appearances despite my agoraphobic condition, and my mother's health issues as well.
In the meantime, going back to the month of April, my mother agreed to sign that proxy, which finally allowed me to attend with her one of her sessions and see her therapist that she had been going to for the past five years, yet of whom I felt did nothing for her. When I described my mother's severe depression issues that I felt she had been experiencing all these years, he said to me what must have been the stupidest thing going. "You're mother doesn't look depressed." She was sitting next to me with a sunny, radiant smile on her face. And it was like, this guy is basing his psycho-analytical evaluation of my mother that she wasn't depressed simply because she was smiling? I couldn't help thinking that my mother could have been helped out in so many ways both for her emotional and medical problems if I only had that intervention years ago. Did she for instance ever tell any of these professional people about the cat situation to begin with? If so, didn't any of them recognize that they were dealing with a hoarder personality which does need psychiatric help to begin with? The problem of course could have stemmed from the fact that their was one thing my mother was great at...she was an actress and could come across so completely different to the outside world. It was only I who was to see her the way she really was...and this, I was to learn was another classic symptom of the hoarder personality. Again I quote from the PDF file:
..."As hoarders tend to be very secretive, many can lead a double life with a successful professional career - hoarding behavior has been discovered among doctors, nurses, public officials, college professors, and veterinarians, as well as among a broad spectrum of socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals."….
Also from The Humane Society website:
..."Because animal hoarders quite often appear to lead normal lives, it's important to recognize when a person's fixation with animals has gotten out of control. The HSUS defines an animal hoarder as a person who has more animals than he or she can properly care for. Another defining characteristic is the hoarder's denial of his inability to care for the animals and his failure to grasp the impact his neglect has on the animals, the household, and the human occupants of the dwelling."….
Hoarding of any kind, is a psychological problem and has to be addressed and treated, but more important has to be recognized in the first place; it's unfortunate that in my mother's case, it wasn't, nor were any of her other emotional issues dealt with. My mother died on August 27, 2006, and reflecting back, I feel nothing but a great pity for her. She had so many emotional issues and problems, including hoarder personality, which not only made my own life a living hell, but hers as well, yet she never recognized that fact for she was too much in a state of denial that anything was remotely wrong with the way we were living. Yes, I am still dealing with my own panic disorder problem but I am now finally on the road to my own recovery in so many ways, for now I have the freedom I didn't have for so many years when surrounded by so many pets. Those years consumed all my time and energy and I did not have the coping skills or ability then to look after my own needs. Now I do.
UPDATE: I unfortunately did not provide link sources to my original article at the time of writing, however, there are a variety of articles about this topic and many have the same "quotes" as I had originally given. I give both clickable links and none clickable
Various articles about pet hoarders:
Animal Hoarding Animal Hoarding
http://www.westlafayette.in.gov/department/division.php?fDD=17-91
Animal Hoarding And Mental Illness
Animal Hoarding And Mental Illness
http://healthbeat.areavoices.com/2009/02/11/animal-hoarding-and-mental-illness/
Behind Closed Doors
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/SHARE_SHelter-And-REscue/conversations/messages/14364
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