Animal Hoarding is Animal Abuse

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Every little girl has that fear if they never find love they will eventually be an old lady with a million cats. This fear is reality. Animal hoarding involves keeping higher than usual numbers of animals as domestic pets without having the ability to properly house or care for them, while at the same time denying this inability. Animal hoarders have a hard time understanding the damage that they are doing to their animals until it is too late. They feel that they are providing the animals needs and in most cases saving them. There is no actual cause as to why people animal hoard.

So why do people hoard animals if there is no medical reason behind it? There are several reasons why people do this. Animal hoarders think that if they save an animal (ex: a stray cat with a hurt foot) that they will feel good knowing that it wasn’t killed at a shelter or put to sleep. Some hoarders think it is a way to feel important, needed, or even for the attention. Some are lonely and the animals provide an emotional connection they're unable to achieve with people. Many hoarders will have enablers, just as a drug addict would; these people support their habit and buy into the stories about providing life-saving support to the animals (psychology today). Although there is no real reason why people need to feel this way according to the recent studies and theories are leading toward attachment disorders in conjunction with personality disorders, paranoia, delusional thinking, depression and other mental illnesses. Some animal hoarders began collecting after a traumatic event or loss, while others see themselves as “rescuers” who save animals from lives on the street (ASPCA).

Not many people understand or even know what animal hoarding is. It ...

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.... Web. 3 Apr. 2011. .

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