'Grabbing cats': Small rescues run on limited resources, volunteers

Nov. 2—Despite being a three-person volunteer organization, members of the Jeannette nonprofit Furry Felines snapped immediately into action when they were alerted to an animal hoarding case, with more than 60 cats and kittens living in unsanitary conditions.

"We had no time to prepare for the situation at all. We got the call, sped down there and started grabbing cats," Furry Felines President Erica Puskar said. "We've been at the property every single day since (early October), trying to catch more and leaving food, water and shelters for the ones that are still there."

Animal hoarding cases arise across the region each year. In addition to the Gaskill Avenue home in Jeannette, more than 70 cats and kittens were removed in April from unsanitary conditions in a Hempfield home.

But what happens after the news cameras leave?

Someone has to care for those animals, and oftentimes that responsibility falls to volunteers who work regular jobs and commit an extraordinary amount of their own time and

money in their desire to help.

One thing is certain: Animal hoarding is not new.

"We have good documentation for cases like these going back 150 years," said Randall Lockwood, former senior vice president and consultant for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and former vice president of research and educational outreach for the U.S. Humane Society. "Until recently, they were viewed as more of a harmless eccentricity, until we saw the development of modern animal control and good veterinary forensics."

In the Jeannette case, neighbors reached out to Furry Felines.

"We immediately contacted the humane officers at All But Furgotten in Irwin and got them involved," Puskar said.

In mid-October, they had taken 71 cats and kittens from the property on Gaskill Avenue and were continuing to catch additional felines. As with many community-based humane groups, the need for supplies and money is great, and the roster of volunteers is small.

"Long story short, we need help," Puskar wrote in a recent post on the Furry Felines Facebook page. "This is a huge undertaking for our three-volunteer rescue, and we're very grateful to the other rescues that have stepped in to help with intakes."

Puskar said Furry Felines simply does not have the financial means to save all of the animals.

"If you're able to adopt a cat from us and make more room for another to come in, you will be saving a life," she said.

Types of hoarding

Lockwood said animal hoarders generally fall into two camps.

"The first is what we call an 'overwhelmed caregiver,' " he said. "They don't necessarily have a disorder. They've gotten in over their heads, and they recognize that they're overwhelmed."

Staff from Ninth Life Rescue Center discovered just such a situation when they brought about 70 cats and kittens out of a Hempfield home in April after being contacted by the homeowner.

"You moved a dresser, and there was 10 kittens under it," Ninth Life President Jen Johnson said. "You moved a bed, and there was 15 cats scattering. ... They did not know how overwhelmed they were. Not a single animal in the house was spayed or had ever seen a vet."

Most of the cats and kittens needed medical attention, racking up thousands of dollars in veterinarian bills.

"I became interested in this because I was concerned about intentional acts of cruelty to animals," Lockwood said. "But most of those are a single person being abusive to a small number of animals. Hoarding cases, however, a lot of times you're talking 40-60 animals, where the neglect can go on for a very long time."

The second general type of animal hoarder is someone in a true state of denial, which led to hoarding being listed in 2013 as an official disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

"People simply fail to recognize the suffering they're causing," Lockwood said. "These are living things that pee, poop, reproduce and suffer. But they see animal control as an enemy who just wants to take their animals away."

Lockwood began examining ASPCA hoarding cases in the early 1980s. By the 1990s, Tufts University had brought together veterinarians and social workers and created the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium.

"It started being taken more seriously," he said, "and began to be increasingly recognized as a mental disorder."

Where do the cats go?

There is also the practical aspect of a hoarding situation to consider: What happens to the more than 60 cats removed from a home?

Twenty-eight of them were handled by Puskar and Furry Felines, sent temporarily to pet foster homes. But the entirety of the Furry Felines staff is Puskar, her husband and a friend.

"We're just regular people with full-time jobs," she said. "Whenever we don't have enough donations to cover care and supplies, it comes out of our paychecks."

Other cats from the Jeannette home were taken in by Wayward Whiskers Animal Rescue, Kitten Scoop, All But Furgotten, Trash Cat Rescue and HEAL Animal Rescue.

Lockwood said he was involved in establishing one of the first "hoarding task forces" in 1998, which brought together various groups with roles in resolving hoarding situations.

"It brought together code enforcement, animal control, child welfare services, prosecutors and the commercial agencies who come in and clean up afterward," he said. "A lot of times, the situation can be too big for any one agency to deal with, and we recognized that it requires input from lots of places."

The eight members of Frankie's Friends, a feline rescue group in New Kensington, took in 65 cats last month in an animal cruelty case. President and medical director Dr. Becky Morrow said hoarding cases "are a big problem because there's no support from the state of any governmental agency for these animals."

"Most of us (rescue organizations) are nonprofit groups, usually operating at capacity to try and take care of animals, provide medical care and find homes," Morrow said.

Frankie's Friends has three veterinarians on board, which allows them not only to save on medical costs, but also to offer low-cost medical care to other rescue groups.

Sometimes, though, the sheer numbers can be overwhelming.

"Nobody has 65 cages available, because honestly you're not doing your job as a rescue if you have so many empty cages," Morrow said. "When we encounter this type of situation, we sort of have to set up our own emergency shelter. We'll try and set up 'cat rooms' for multiple cats, with cages reserved for the cats who need special care."

Puskar said the simple act of spaying and neutering is a big step toward keeping animal lovers from getting overwhelmed.

"We see a lot of cases where someone starts with two cats that aren't fixed, and within a year, there can be over a hundred," she said. "An unfixed female can have a litter every two months, and after six months, when the first female might have three litters, her kittens can already have their own kittens."

Though Lockwood said his main motive is ensuring animals receive proper care, he says he understands why animal hoarders can present a difficult situation.

"Certainly, it's a different phenomenon from material hoarding," he said. "People form attachments to animals in a way that they don't with inanimate objects."

Patrick Varine is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Patrick by email at pvarine@triblive.com or via Twitter .