Is It Hoarding?

We all love our pets and animals and many have more than one or two. I myself have several indoor and a few outdoor family pets to love and take care of with the help of my family. When is it too many? We all would like to think we can take care of them all, the amount isn't a issue. Most of us do realize that there is a limit to how many we can love and take care properly. Of course how many pets you have depends on your home life, home size, financial ability and happiness of the pet just to name a few. There are those because of their love of pets and animals that have a blind eye to the awareness, that too many pets are not good for them or the pets. They soon become surrounded by a sea of animals who have taken over their home and life. This type of situation always has a bad outcome, neglect of the pets, no matter how many good intentions the owner has. They have become animal hoarders, a sickness I believe, but never the less a hoarder. In your opinion, how many pets are too many?

I would say it's different with everyone. I currently have fourteen pets of my own and I am able to take care of all of them properly and spend enough time with them. It helps that they socialize with each other too and some of them don't need or want to be played with. I would say it's hoarding once you have reached a point where you can no longer take care of all of your pets financially and socially.

(08-07-2012, 04:21 AM)writer811 Wrote: I would say it's different with everyone. I currently have fourteen pets of my own and I am able to take care of all of them properly and spend enough time with them. It helps that they socialize with each other too and some of them don't need or want to be played with. I would say it's hoarding once you have reached a point where you can no longer take care of all of your pets financially and socially.

I positively agree with you. It is a individual situation. I never really tallied my animals in a hoarding sense., but I have 11 animals. Different types mind you, so I could see why people would raise a eyebrow when I would say I have 11. Like you I have the time and help to make sure they are cared for properly. Although I feel bad for all animals needing and home and love, but I know my limitations. I think that is where some people go wrong.

I agree that "too many" is a loose term because it depends on the situation. I currently have 11 pets but have been as high as 23 but I am home pretty much 24/7 and a neat freak so they all had plenty of attention and lived in a clean environment. I think at the point where you can walk into a home and SMELL the animals...they are at too much. When I was adopting out my ferret fosters I had so many people come in and comment that they would never have known I had ferrets because they assumed all ferrets stunk. There is always a way to keep the odor down in any animal as well as their enclosure. I also think that the day you can't give every one of your animals some sort of attention then you are in over your head (and sticking a food bowl in hardly constitutes attention!)

There is such a thing as animal hoarding. However, it really does depend on the size of the home. I would say if someone has a 1 bedroom apartment, 4 is too many. I could not imagine the stink in that small place with the kitty litter. If it were a 4 bedroom house or something, then 6-8 MIGHT be acceptable. Any more than 10 would be considered hoarding. Now, if they are outside cats, I don't think there is a limit in my opinion. Most outdoor cats are ones that start outdoors as they come wondering to your neighborhood. When you begin to food them, they stick around and soon you start to call them your own. You are simply helping the cat race.

(08-07-2012, 11:13 PM)dashboardc33 Wrote: There is such a thing as animal hoarding. However, it really does depend on the size of the home. I would say if someone has a 1 bedroom apartment, 4 is too many. I could not imagine the stink in that small place with the kitty litter. If it were a 4 bedroom house or something, then 6-8 MIGHT be acceptable. Any more than 10 would be considered hoarding. Now, if they are outside cats, I don't think there is a limit in my opinion. Most outdoor cats are ones that start outdoors as they come wondering to your neighborhood. When you begin to food them, they stick around and soon you start to call them your own. You are simply helping the cat race.

Is that your opinion just for cats? I have a one bedroom apartment with 3 dogs, 5 chinchillas, a hedgehog, an iguana, and a bearded dragon and I can guarantee my home doesn't smell. I think any home that can keep up on the waste on a daily basis should have no reason to stink, regardless of the amount. I won't have a cat because I can not tolerate cleaning a litter box and I know that it has to be a minimum of once daily...yes cats do stink LOL

If you live in a bachelor or one-bedroom apartment in the city then I think more than four pets are too many. However, if one lives on a farm or large residence then there is no such thing as too many. If I had a farm, I'd rescue and adopt many, many animals.

I agree with most of the above posts. I'm sure most people have seem the shows with the old lady in the apartment full of dog poop and 37 dogs and cats. The same can go with birds, reptiles, fish, etc... I think its just making sure you can care for all the animals properly, per their needs. Everytime we see a cat, someone in my house wants it. But, we are maxed out on our cat caring abilities.in this house, so it won't happen.

Fishbone is right the point of too many is when you cannot treat those animals as you would a family member. If you can't feed it, house it properly, exercise it...you don't need it. We have 5 chinchillas and no matter how much either of us want another we know that we are stretched to our chinchilla limits. I rehomed a few animals when I got put on a fixed income because I knew that I couldn't afford to feed them properly...it was the only thing to do

I think the love or the feeling they get from nurturing over powers their sense of reason. I believe most of these people do start of with very good intentions. No matter it's the animals who lose out. I think it's a sickness, hoarding animals. Many of these people just get lost in the emotions. It's a growing problem in outlining areas of the cities. Even though the end result is the negligence of the animals, it's different than someone who is openly harmful to animals. There needs to be different ways of handling each situation. Do I think the lady who has 37 cats, and gets overwhelmed should be fined or charged like the guy up the street that keeps his dogs for fighting, absolutely not! In my area they are. Things need to change.

A friend of mine has like 20 cats in her house, she keeps taking them in. I cannot imagine that being healthy for any of the cats since the litter box is constantly soiled. She cannot afford to take them all to the vet for regular check ups, and they're more or less trapped in there when they could have been adopted by someone else and cared for. Many cities have at least one no-kill shelter they could be bringing them to instead of hoarding them like that.

I love animals too, and at one point we did have 3 dogs - but reality starts to set in when one or all of them fall ill and require a lot of trips to the vet, things got really expensive at times. And if we weren't able to afford it, they would have been forced to suffer.

I bought my niece two guinea pigs for her birthday and they started to multiply, like crazy, before you know it she had almost 20 of them and she just couldn’t get rid of them. I don’t think she was hoarding them she was just so attached to every one of them and couldn’t bare to give them away. A couple years later she ended up giving some of them away but it was such an emotional process for her. I believe it hurt her to give them way and she would say I can’t give away my babies, that’s like giving away a child.

I do think it depends on many factors, including the size of home, whether there's sufficient space for litter boxes (assuming we're talking about cats,) whether the person can afford to get them medical attention as needed (yearly and catastrophic,) whether the person can afford decent food, etc.

My ex and I lived in a very large 3-bedroom apartment and had 5 indoor cats. I did have to put my foot down about having any more than that or he would have taken in the all the feral cats that made their way to our door. He did feed the ones outside as well. We did fine with the 5 but that really was our limit.