Do you know that Hoarding is a mental illness which is usually about loss? Some people are just drawn to replace or fill a void in their lives. My mom was one such person and I guess I was a co-dependent supporter. I say WAS now, because she lives in her apartment with her two cats, Snookie, and Leo, and one little Yorkshire Terrier, Piper. Mom is now starting to suffer from dementia and often doesn't remember conversations from minute to minute much less years ago where the pitter patter of little kitty feet roared with the strength of a pride of lions through house walls.
You see, all things in life, for the most part, start innocently in life. Mom and I were up to 8 cats (all well loved, cutely named, up-to-date on shots, and only missing their pictures with Santa to be called full-fledged children.) Puff was the first (and should have been our only) cat. One cat in a lifetime has this type of love to give... but I digress. She deserves her own story.
Three kittens were found outside our house, which I took to work and bottle fed. This started the downward spiral of cat infestation. Mom started doing "animal rescue" only she didn't work with an organization and the feral little beasties came to live in whatever nook and cranny existed in our home.
Mom started feeding whatever stray lived in our neighborhood despite the strong opposition of the home owners association and friends and neighbors. Remember the best girl friend who dumped me? (we'll revisit later) but you know, it ended ugly in cat land.
All clothes in our house had to be thrown away (and as an Executive in Northern Virginia, I had some nice clothes), carpets stank to high heavens... I just shudder now, thinking back.
I know that you say surely, this train wreck had to be stopped. I feel your pain, and my own, too. Mom was not to be swayed from bringing in one cat critter after another.
BABY IAN was born in June 2000. He was asthmatic. Now, I thought, Mom will give up the cats (I was already past my kitty craze - with the exception of Puff). I was bewildered. Didn't she love him or me more that the cats? The plans of Mice and Men often go awry. I thought the Hoarding could be changed with every logical argument I could make - this over a 2 year period. I guess I didn't know quite what to do, either.
All things come around though, Mom dropped off Ian at daycare and I found that she was putting him in a cat cage so that the cats couldn't get on him. One day, I was called by the day care. They let me know that Ian's outfit needed to be changed. I guess a cat sprayed him through the cage and he was covered in cat urine.
Okay - a brick smacked my head beyond all else. I picked up my baby, and my Aunt and Uncle let me stay with them while I devised an escape plan. Kitties were placed with every available organization possible and those too feral to be re-homed, went to the pound. I'm sorry if you are offended by the horror story but none of this is easy - especially the hurt and betrayal my Mom felt with me taking her animals and grandson away from her.
I'm not sure what wounds my mom was trying to heal - maybe a poverty childhood, or a crush boyfriend who left her with me (she was a Pentecostal preacher's daughter), or marrying an abusive man to give a 2-year old girl a daddy and us a home outside of a truck-stop and small apartment), or maybe moving back home to more poverty and a very angry young teenage daughter, maybe losses in jobs, friends, her mom and dad, loss upon loss. I don't know how my mom survived her life.
I can only tell you that happiness can grow out of this. Many elements pulled together for her to end up in her happy, neat apartment with Snookie, Leo, and Piper. As for Ian and I, we go to visit. The best advise I can give is to not ever, under any circumstance, hoard your love and support.
Live a life worth living.
Julie Anne Joyce
2 cousins "hoarded" cats as well. One in NY, one in NJ. For the only-child NY cousin the cat-hoarding kept her from getting married.
ReplyDeleteFor the NJ cousin who lives in an Old exclusive neighborhood one of the 7 feral cats, who liked to be inside, not only peed on the expensive grass cloth wallpaper all around the edges of the dining room BUT peed in an electrical socket. Burned a good deal of the house as a result.
It is an odd phenomenon, she who has 3 said...