Cat Lady in Phoenix

From another list, but I have contacted this woman (poster, not Cat Lady) directly. If you have any suggestions for her, please reply directly to me, and I will be happy to forward. This lady wants to do what is best for both the Cat Lady and for the cats.

Anyone have any contacts with cat/kitten rescue in Phoenix, AZ? I was hoping someone might be able to step in to help educate/assist the cat lady in spay/neuter and in placing some of the existing cats.

Thanks!

DH

FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS:

The best thing is for some rescue groups to go in there, take out the excess cats, help her spay/neuter the remaining ones. If she doesn't do this, the health dept. could condemn her entire house and she'll lose her house and all the cats. I wish I were local but I'm not. I'd go to google.com and search arizona cat rescue. Thanks for caring.

I wonder does anyone ever just ask these people if they need some help and try to befriend them? I expect that a person gets in this state of neglect and neglectfulness because of loneliness. Yes the health of the cats is a big concern, but I'm not sure that the overall situation is helped by unleashing officials who will almost certainly charge in and start taking and killing the cats.

Gayle

bottom of the first article) about how to do an intervention: http://www.hsus2.org/sheltering/library/ animal_collectors.html

Excellent article.

Keep in mind that cat hoarders generally are mentally ill, and one person trying to help will not be enough.

Absolutely. If the conditions are as bad as they seem (judging by the noticeable stink reported by the OP), there's nothing a single person can do. Rounding up the cats, arranging for their vetting/neutering, cleaning the house, fostering adoptables, etc. all together are more on the order of a campaign, calling for planning and organization.

If the Cat Lady is just mildly off-kilter, stuck in a situation that she let get out of control and can't cope with by herself, then something constructive is possible. (Anyone watch Animal Precinct this week?)

If, OTOH, the Cat Lady is bonkers, I don't think the ending is going to be a happy one for the cats.

pardon the rant but: that's just great; yet another article that doesn't say a dam thing about whether or not the cats were fixed.

'First, take the case of Hazel Swindel, a 61-year-old woman from Starke, Florida, who by last summer had accumulated more than 150 cats in her 600-square-foot ramshackle house.'

Define 'accumulate'. She most certainly did not bring home 150 cats since they would have produced 1,500 kittens. More likely she brought home no more than a dozen but didn't have them fixed.

As for the guy who 'actively raised money to operate as a 'refuge'and even had a sign-in form for accepting pet owners' animals.' He should be fined heavily and sentenced to jail for each cat he took in but didn't have fixed (all 1,000 I'd wager) with all 1,000 jail terms served consecutively.

As for 'THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ANIMAL COLLECTORS By Randall Lockwood, Ph.D., HSUS Vice President for Training Initiatives' One of my favorite familiar quotations is don't automatically attribute to malice (or mental illness) that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.' This genius PhD is apparently too stupid to figure out that some people just don't realize how fast cats reproduce (maybe the genius PhD doesn't know that himself). They bring home a few strays but don't know enough to have them fixed or just can't afford it. After even a single litter they really can't afford to have them all fixed. Then there's more litters and now there's not enough money for cat litter, after another litter there's not enough money for food. By the time they realize they need help they're too e mbarrassed to ask for it. But there was never any mental illness; just ignorance and a situation that got out of control.

I've heard of people who never threw away a newspaper or magazine or took out the trash until there was no more room in the house to walk. I'd concede that these people are 'collectors' and may be mentally ill because the papers and trash didn't get there on their own, a person went out and got them. But people don't go out and get 150 cats; they get a couple and the rest do get there on their own. I just can't believe these experts on collecting don't get that difference.

ron herfurth 13 cats 10 collected 3 surprises all fixed

That's because they NEVER are. It's common knowledge that this is generally how the problems start. You even see these types of situations now on the Animal Precinct and Animal Cops shows on Animal Planet. I doubt there is one single case on record where a collector spayed and neutered all their animals.

Megan

'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.'

-Edmund Burke

Learn The TRUTH About Declawing http://www.stopdeclaw.com

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Ron,

The idea is that reasonable, sound-minded person would recognize teh situatio BEFORE it got to teh point where there were 150 cats that they couldn't afford to feed or properly care for. I can see having a few cats, then one 'accident' litter happens. A person capable fo logical & reasonable thought would recognize the issue, and either get teh kitties fixed or rehome them. Honestly, it's not like the lady had 3 cats one day, and woke up the next to find 150 new kittens. It happens litter by litter, and only someone with some sort of mental illness couldn't see the repercussions of letting it continue. How many litters does someone need ot ahve born before they realize it si going ot become a problem?

I can't believe you don't see it as the SAME problem.

.

Excuse me for dragging this conversation a little off-topic, but I have been following this thread and I really need to comment on this one.

being mentally ill does not equal not being reasonable, or sound-minded. Yes, in many mental illness there are thought-related perception problems, but that is not the same thing. Being mentally ill doesn't equal being incapable of logical or reasonable thought. Yes, there are *a few* mentally ill people who aren't, but they are in the vast minority.

I think you may be thinking more of what are now termed 'learning disabilities' (and used to, wrongly, be called mental retardation'. Believe me when I tell you that I know a great many mentally ill people and none of them that I can think of would ever think of getting themselves into this situation. In fact, most of the mentally ill people I know are much more insightful into life than non-ill people.

Obviously I am not saying that these things do not happen with mentally ill people. They can also happen to others too. It really doesn't help the cause of the mentally ill, and their attempts to reduce the stigma of their illness if people automatically blame the 'mentally ill' for things like this. Here we get it with every case of physical attack on someone (if it makes the papers), and all sorts of things. You will find the 'he/she was being treated for mental illness' or 'he/she was under the care of a psychiatrist' and everyone else goes 'ah, those damn mentally ill people, care in the community doesn't work' etc etc. The rest of the population with mental health problems are then seen as the same as whoever has done something bad. Its an uphill battle.

Please try to remember that the mentally ill are people. They are human beings and they are trying to make the best of what life gives them. Treating them as abnormal, or mad is not going to make it any easier. Maybe, if this woman is mentally ill, the reason she got into this situation was that she got love from her cats, and in a world where everyone hates you and rejects you because you are ill you will cling to whatever you can get. If she is totally alone, then her cats are her children, her security, her everything. Yes, she needs help, and the cats need help. They don't necessarily need seperating. Maybe she is financially unstable (as most mentally ill people can't get a job anyway they have to rely on benefit and it isn't easy - assuming she is ill). Maybe she needs some education. She is probably not a bad person, just a little lost in it all now.

Right, rant over. Just remember, if nothing else, that mentally ill people are as human as you are, and you could be the next one diagnosed with an illness and then you'll be 'one of them'. In this country (the UK) it is said 1 in 4 people suffers mental illness at some point.

Ali

(in case you hadn't worked it out, I am diagnosed as mentally ill, and have been for the cast majority of my life. Surprisingly though, I am capable of logical, reasonable, thought and am capable of being sound-minded. I just have a few problems with a few things).

ok, maybe you're right. But I stand by my other point that shows, experts, etc imply that the person went out and individually collected 100 cats. They never come out and say that someone only took in 2 cats but now have 100. ron herfurth

There are many different forms of mental illness, and not all come with the ability to make logical and reasonable decisions. I think you are taking this a bit too personally. I was not making a statement saying that all mentally ill people can't make decisions and as such arne't human. I was saying that being unable to maintain logical and reasonable thought is a mental illness. A, one of many that exist, not every or the only mental illness.

I never said the woan wa s abad person. I didn't say anything one way or the other, except that she didn't wake up to find 150 cats in her house.