We've talked about how many animals we own. Now let's gossip. Who do you know (besides me, I mean) who has too damn many animals? Whose house smells like a hamster cage? Whose 30 cats creep you out so badly that you can't stand to visit? Who has so many dogs that they're all totally out of control?

Do you know what your city's limit is on the number of pets that can be kept in a home without a kennel license? In Sacramento County I believe the limit is four for both cats and dogs. (I don't know about the city; guess I should figure that out since that's where I live.) This means that many people who are doing animal rescue are breaking the law, since the county issues very few kennel licenses, almost all to breeders. Do you think that's a good or bad thing?

You may have heard about the lady in San Francisco who had 200 cats, all living in filth. Apparently, animal hoarding is considered a mental condition, a type of compulsive behavior. It's a syndrome that affects mostly middle-aged or older women living alone, and it's not uncommon.

Do you know anyone who collects animals? And again, we're not talking about me here! I can quit any time.

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2001

Answers

I think what really grosses me out is people who have pets they don't take care of properly. I used to live with a woman who had all manner of exotic pets.. hissing cockroaches, lizards, etc. The house always smelled like urine because she never cleaned their cages.

I don't believe there is such a thing as too many dogs.

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2001

This is a really disgusting story. I mean it! Don't read below this sentence if you don't want to read something disgusting.

I was working for a big telecom company and had to send a technician out to a house to replace some equipment. After I read the notes on the account, I called the tech and read them to him - not standard operating procedure, but it was clear I didn't want to send a man in to this house without warning. It was pages and pages of notes - about what a tech has to do to enter the home. "Tech must wear hipwaders. Tech must wear rubber gloves to the elbow. Tech must wear breathing mask." etc. Not the usual stuff to see on an account, where notes usually run to things like, "Tech needs 15 foot ladder" or "Tech needs gate key."

The tech called me back later that day - he went home early after he finished that call - and he wasn't some pansy non-dog owner - he had a few dogs himself. The house he went to was a little saltbox of a place, with just an old man in it. An old man, and hundreds of cats and dogs. There was shit everywhere....the floor was covered in a few feet of it, the walls were smeared with it, and the equipment the tech was supposed to pick up because it was malfunctioning - well, maybe it was malfunctioning because it was covered with a year's worth of caked on cat poop. It was so bad, apparently, that the tech said there was a gas layer hovering over the carpet of poop in the living room. The animals were never let outside, and the owner didn't pick up after them inside. It was a house of moldy old dog and cat poop.

The company wrote the equipment off - $250, but the tech refused to touch it, much less put it in his nice, clean truck, and the company decided to just never send another tech. out again. We called the board of health, and some elder care places, but they all already knew who he was.

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2001

My Aunt has six cats. She's a technical writer who does contract work, which means that she picks up and moves every few months to her next assignment.

So, she has six cats, an air matress, and a late 70's Lincoln Continental named Cedric.

One day, I'm sitting at home when I look outside to see my aunt, her six cats and Cedric sitting in my driveway.

"We're here for a few days!" My aunt announces gleefully.

"Oh no," I think to myself. "Oh Shit," my husband thinks to himself.

After the first night it just got to be too much. I had to ask her to leave ... 7 cats (her 6 plus my own cat) and one dog and three people in a 900 square foot 2-bedroom house just was not going over so well.

She agreed to leave. On one condition. I had to take a cat.

I still think it was a fair trade.

So now I have two cats, Milo and Freya, and one dog, Loki. Milo was the freebie. He's not too bad. He purrs loudly and eats bugs.

You can see pictures of the gang here.

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2001

She had 6 cats AND an air mattress? Wow.

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2001

I don't know any cat collectors, but my mom has made it a habit to name all of the stray cats in the neighborhood.

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2001

I have one neighbor I'm not sure of ... she does cat rescue but her house always looks beautiful, so I think she's probably not crazy. I think the crazy thing comes from a collecting impulse rather than a rescue impulse.

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2001

Buuuhhhhaaaahhhhhh!!!

You know my 3 Dog Insanity now. What you described goes on in my house every day.

And my Brandy has that ligiment thing wrong with her leg, most likely from getting pummled by Ginger.

But at least my dogs are SOMEHWHAT civilized. They will listen if you are the loudest dog. My neighber has FIVE yappy dashunds who she doesn't bother to watch or make shut up. If left unattended they will bark ALL day long at nothing in particular. I want Ginger to eat one of them to scare the others.

Colleen

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2001

The hazards of having 6 cats and an air mattress never occured to me until now ... I suppose that is better than having six cats and a waterbed! I'm guessing that she keeps massive amounts of duct tape available at all times.

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2001

My friend, cyn, (http://home.earthlink.net/~cintagothy )has 4 dogs (2 regular, 2 foster), a cat, and a ferret or two. Now while I -would- say that she and her husband are eccentric, but that's based off of their lack of a t.v. and a propensity towards healthy food and exercise, not their extended family.

I'd say, if someone asked, that they have so many pets because of an over abundance of love in that house. If you met these two, you would just know that without a plethora of animals to exhaust themselves, these people would soon combust. It's good to find people such as these who take in stray or abandoned pets and can actually provide good, clean, loving care.

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2001

slight tangent, I picked up some pop novel off the supermarket shelf awhile back. It was a serial/thriller/killer book (i don't remember the name)

Anyway, there was one passage about animals and dead owners. That dogs will stay by you and nearly starve to death, but cats dissociate you pretty quickly from the living and will start taking bites out of you soon after they get hungry. Any truth to this?

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2001

The wife of a client of ours started raising expensive exotic birds. She started with a couple and bred them, then got other kinds... and bred them... and before you know it, she had around twenty birds, all in their house. They were wealthy enough to handle the expenses and upkeep, but I couldn't bear to visit -- the noise alone was astounding and that many birds, no matter how clean, still smell. So the husband built a glassed-in (shoot, what's the name for a bird sanctuary? hate it when I can't think of a word) -- anyway, they had this beautiful addition built onto their house for the birds so she could care for them. And she kept buying more and breeding more. The original plan was to breed to sell them, only she got attached to each one and wouldn't sell them. He added on again, which still wasn't enough space. The next thing I knew, they were getting divorced and she had rented an air-conditioned warehouse and had set it up for her birds -- which numbered more than 100 at that point. These birds cost upwards of $10,000 each (for the ones she bought) (they had that kind of money, plus she bred a lot of them) and it was literally a full-time job taking care of them. By the time she fed each of them their morning meal (and did whatever else it was she had to do for them), it was time to start over for the evening meal. Apparently, the husband had drawn the line in the sand when she bought a mattress and took to sleeping at the warehouse so she could take care of them. He offered to hire help (and had long given up hoping she'd sell some of them and lessen the load), and she refused. She got sick (birds create a vast amount of dust) and had to wear a special suit and an oxygen mask in order to be around them. The doctor insisted that she give them up for her health, but she wouldn't. Last thing I heard about her, the divorce was final, she got custody of the birds and she moved them to some place in Tennessee where her family was from so she could raise them on the family farm (with her family's help, I presume.)

True story.

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2001

To take up where cory left off. I would think that a cat would be less inclined to take a bite out off you once you passed on. If I look at the the cats in Africa all of them are hunters. They slaughter their prey and eat them whereas dogs are scavengers for the most part.

The only cats I can think off are Lions, Cheetah, Rinkhals etc etc and all of them hunt. Common house cats aren't too far removed from their African cousins.

Dogs are scavengers. He may stay with you out of loyalty but eventually I think he would take a bite.

Strange though that the two species man has domesticated for companionship are so different. But I suppose they are better than a sheep.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2001

Toni: An aviary.

My friend is an animal collector. Not very crazy though. She's got two cats, three snakes, two bearded dragons, and six or seven or more rats, and a dog. Her roommate has a cat, three tarantulas, a Savannah monitor, a snake and a dead scorpion.

They live in a two bedroom apartment. It's stinky, due to the cats, rats and the dog only being partially housebroken (7 month old pup that's accustomed to living outside). I can't stand to go in there.

But it's nothing compared to a woman who was evicted from her complex. Apparently the super went in to fix something and found about 30 cats and everything on the floor was free game to be a little box.

Ugh, I can't even stand having a little box in our detached laundry room... how can people live with animals eliminating on the floor and leaving it there?

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2001

Erm, litteR box.

I have no clue why I'm dropping my R's.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2001

Aviary! Ahh, thanks, Mar. I can't stand it when I know a word and it just Will Not Cooperate. Ugh.

And all the elimination on the floor (your story and the tech one above)... good god, isn't that a health hazard above and beyond just an awful smell? I don't know how anyone could live like that (or want to).

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2001

When I recently got my second kittie (of course a stray), I had visions of being the old, never married "cat woman." The lady kids talked about when they passed your house dragging a stick along the fence.

They'd say, "oh, you know, I heard Miss Grace never married. No suitor wanted to go near her with all those cats!" And there I'd live where I'd collect even more cats and eventually various other animals. One more kittie would put me over... well that and being a bridesmaid 3 times.

Whatever the case, I thought I'd doomed myself.

Clearly I was wrong. THANK YOU! (Though I still think it would be totally cool to have a farm where I could live and play a huge animal collection - well, and a man.)

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2001

Try having FIVE fairly large dogs living in the house. I have a friend like that. She recently lost one. The only male of the bunch. I miss him too, actually. He was beautiful.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2001

I'm pretty sure my neighbors consider me a crazy animal lady by now. For the past several years I have had 2 dogs and 3 cats in a 3- bedroom house with a large yard. Quite manageable.

In January my sister called from Texas and begged me to take in her 2 cats, because her Air Force husband's next assignment is 2 years in Guam. I agreed. In February she called and begged me to take in her 2 dogs, because our mother had refused. After calling everyone I was unable to find a foster home for even one of them, so I agreed to take them in for six months. Six months is the magical amount of time needed for her to save the money to ship the dogs to Guam and put them in quarantine for 30 days.

I cannot believe I was stupid enough to do this. I spend all of my spare time cleaning. Between washing doggy dishes, dog cages, cat boxes, pooper scooping the back yard, and bathing the dogs and cats themselves and then cleaning the rest of the house, I have time for nothing else on weekends. It's been 3 months now and I already know I am going to have to repaint the entire house and replace the carpet when those dogs finally go.

I swear my 5 were not this bad. For one thing, we kept the litter box in the garage, so it wasn't stinking up the house, but now we have to keep it in the spare bedroom because my sister's cat is a head case who can only live in one room.

Don't even get me started on the trauma of living with a rottwieler who suddenly decided last month that he wants to kill all the cats!

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2001

Toni: besides "aviary," a mews is where you keep your hunting falcons.

All parrot owners are insane. Only severely disturbed people would want a parrot or enjoy one. The degree of insanity is torqued up by the number and kind of bird (the bigger the species, the more insane you would have to be). When we've discussed getting a second bird as a companion for our cockatiel, my objections have ranged from a) It'll Be That Much Longer Before They're All Dead So We Can Have a Dog Like Normal People b) One Is Needy Enough and We Couldn't Satisfy Two so it's vaguely reassuring to me that we have enough mental health left to limit ourselves.

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2001

Yeah, Lisa, I agree with the parrot thing. My sister has two dogs, a cat, a guinea pig, and recently acquired a macaw. My sister keeps her house spotlessly clean and the dogs and cat are housebroken, but that bird! Loud, needy, and messy. She has brought him to visit twice, and although his colors are beautiful, I just can't get all warm and mushy about him. Or his mess (she says you have to keep them busy or they pluck out their own feathers). Guess I'm just not a bird person.

-- Anonymous, June 25, 2001

I have a friend who has 9 dogs, 10 cats, and a hamster. And they all see the vet twice a year at least, are fixed, and are fed the best food and go through obedience classes and the whole spiel. I have no idea how she manages. I have another friend who has four cats and six dogs and yet another friend who used to have 4 cats, 2 huge fish, and three large dogs in a her trailer home. Hmmmm, I would say I attract some odd people, but hell, they're all well taken care of, so I guess its not a bad thing. Where they find time do do things other than walk dogs and feed and clean I have no clue!

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2001