The definition of an animal hoarder is someone who keeps higher than usual numbers of pets without being able to properly care for them, while at the same time denying the problem.
Mikey’s bags were packed and ready to go—his bed, his catnip pillow, and the little red and gray afghan I had crocheted for him were set beside his carrier. I’d faxed Tina’s application to the FOF counselor and was still waiting on the final okay but that was only a formality. FOF did background checks on all potential adopters but rarely did they find a problem that would impact the adoption.
Tina was set to come by in the afternoon. I still had second thoughts but I quashed them. This was why I fostered, I kept reminding myself.
Mike was lounging in his kennel, blissfully ignorant of the upcoming upheaval. The kennel door was open and I had installed a set of pet steps after the chin-up incident so he could get in and out anytime he wanted, but he liked the small, safe niche with its window onto the world. I smiled—everybody loved the kennel.
I heard church bells in the kitchen and went to answer my phone. It was Denny.
“Special Agent Paris, what can I do for you?”
“Lynley, we have a situation,” he began. His voice was strained and formal.
I immediately sobered. “What is it?”
“Early this morning we were called in to investigate a case of suspected animal neglect, a hoarding situation. Because of an eye-witness account, we were able to obtain a search warrant, and Connie, Frank, and I went to the site.” He sighed so heavily it was almost a moan. “Lynley, it’s one of the worst we’ve ever seen. Fifty-four adult cats and we haven’t even established how many kittens but at least two dozen—over eighty total, all living in one big, absolutely disgusting room. The funny thing is, the owner—or I should say former owner because she did finally relinquish the cats to Northwest Humane—she isn’t poor by any means. In fact you’d never guess by looking at the home what was inside. The house is up on Portland Heights where the rich people live, but some of those cats were starving and all are severely undernourished. It’s a nightmare. Mercifully we got there in time.”
I listened with a mix of disgust, rage, and sympathy. Hoarding was a sickness, almost an addiction in some cases. When people think of cat hoarders, they envision an uneducated, sloppy old lady in a trailer, but that’s only one scenario. Hoarding transcends the boundaries of class, sex, and wealth. I thought back to the conversation Frannie and I’d had in the bar the night before. There but for the Grace of God, and all.
“What can I do?” I asked.
“We need trained volunteers to help with the rescue effort. We have three STAR members but we’re going to need everyone we can get. I warn you though, it’s going to redefine your idea of filth. You can decline and no one will think any less of you. I just thought since you’ve been through all the rescue training and have worked with us before, how you’d be a real asset.”
STAR, the Shelter Technical Animal Rescue team, didn’t usually participate in hoarding cases. They were the ones who rappelled down a cliff to save a fallen dog or climbed under a bridge after a stranded cat. For them to aid investigations meant this was a really big thing.
“Of course I’ll help, but when are you going? I’ve got an adopter coming by my house to get her cat at two-thirty.”
“It took a while to get the paperwork in order, but we’re heading there right now. It’ll probably take most of the day. Once the cats are seized, we move them to the Veterinary Learning Center to get checked out. The VLC is standing by with all the medical students, assistants, and volunteers they can muster. Any cats who are basically healthy and have already been altered will be bathed and groomed, treated for fleas, worms, ear mites, and lice, and given their shots, then transferred to several shelters around the area for personality assessments and if all goes well, adoption. The sick ones will stay at the hospital and so will the ones needing spay and neuter. We could sure use another pair of hands, but if you have prior obligations...”
I looked at the clock. It was nearing noon. I’d been on these ventures before and knew they could last long into the night. With resolve, I made a snap decision. “Denny, I can get someone else to handle the adoption. Frannie can probably come get Mike and take him to the shelter, and the girl can pick him up there. Let me make a few calls and then where should I meet you?”
He recited an address that raised my eyebrows. In that part of town, they weren’t called houses; they were estates. With hoarders, you just never knew!
“Wear something that covers your entire body, coveralls, long-sleeved shirt, etcetera. We’ll have paper booties, gloves, goggles, and face masks at the site.”
“Will do. See you soon.” Booties? Face masks? This wasn’t going to be pretty.
* * *
Frannie and another FOF friend, Carla, came to my rescue so I could come to the rescue of the eighty starving cats. I car-pooled with Rick Schwartz, a STAR member, and found out a little more about the case.
An anonymous tip had come in to the investigations department the day before, he told me in his Washingtonian drawl, stating that someone had three hundred cats locked up in their attic. The operator took the address and passed it to the on-call investigator, Special Agent Frank Dawson, per protocol. Frank began the warrant process but knew it wasn’t going to come through until morning at the very earliest. If it was an abuse charge, he might have been able to push it faster, but hoarding, though contemptible, wasn’t usually an immediate threat to the animals. Besides, from experience he knew that an anonymous accusation of three hundred cats would most likely turn out to be an exaggeration. He anticipated a far lesser number if it was a real situation at all. Like nine-one-one, people called in with all sorts of tales—true, partially true, and sometimes downright lies. Unlike nine-one-one, unless they gave a name and number, they were basically untraceable. It wasn’t against the law to screw with the Humane Investigators—it was just exceedingly bad form.
“Then we got a second call,” Rick said as he maneuvered his way through Monday downtown traffic toward the West Hills. “I don’t know if it was the same person—I doubt it because this one was way more forthcoming. They had no qualms about giving their name; they were the neighbors of the suspect and reported hearing some serious yowling coming from an upstairs window. They also described a horrendous smell.”
“Why hadn’t they reported it before?”
“Frank asked them that, and they said this was the first time the small dormer window had been open all summer. Well, that really got us going, as you can imagine. Unless the place has air conditioning, which I seriously doubt in that age of house, the temperature in an attic with the windows shut in the August heat can get up into the triple digits. If there were cats locked up there, they could die of dehydration in a very short time.”
“But there aren’t really three hundred cats, are there?”
Rick shook his head. “No, of course not.”
“Denny told me fifty-some and a raft of kittens.”
“Yeah, the unofficial count is up to eighty-two.”
“Oh, well, that’s not so bad,” I said sarcastically.
Rick’s eyes shot over at me. “You ever see eighty neglected cats in one room?” He shuddered. Obviously he had.
“Sorry, bad joke. It’s a heck of a big number. That’s about twice the population of FOF on a good day.”
“Yeah.”
For the rest of the journey, we were quiet. I couldn’t guess what he was thinking, but I was beginning to wonder what I’d gotten myself into.
We pulled up in front of an absolutely gorgeous vintage Victorian mini-mansion, joining the Northwest Humane investigations van and several other official and unofficial vehicles. The lawn was lush green and impeccably trimmed, the kind you see in the Turf Builder commercials; the garden was pristine with a flawless array of colorful flowers, plants, and trees. The house itself looked to be freshly painted and meticulously kept.
We walked through the open door, and I saw that the interior was even more impressive: dark polished wood shone like smoky glass, silk-covered walls must have cost a fortune, high ceilings were hung with enough crystal to stock a high-end lighting store. Everything was immaculate and ordered, which was why the overpowering smell of feces, urine, and other bad things I refused to name was so impossibly incongruous.
“Woah!” I said as I got a whiff.
“No kidding,” Denny agreed as he met me in the hallway. He was wearing his mask, and sweat was dripping from where it fit against his nose and cheeks. With mask and goggles, he was barely recognizable: only the bronze star-shaped badge on his official Northwest Humane investigations hat proclaimed his identity since below the neck, every inch of him was protected by a blue canvas jumpsuit. I knew he must be sweltering in all that heavy clothing, but in spite of the heat factor, I suddenly wished I’d worn another layer myself.
Denny handed me a mask, a set of paper booties, and a paper shower cap. “This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,” he proclaimed, shaking his alien-looking head. “The place is top class all the way until you get to the third floor. Then it’s like you stepped through a portal into another world and not a good one either. Cats everywhere. We haven’t been able to get any kind of accurate count. Some are in really bad shape. A few of them are dead.”
“We found three carcasses in the freezer,” Connie Lee announced as she joined the briefing. Pulling down her mask and wiped her face with a bandana. “Now who does that, I ask you? This woman’s a real nut-case.”
I began donning the protective attire. “Where is she?”
Denny nodded toward the adjoining room—a living room or maybe it was the parlor? I wasn’t really up on the anatomy of a mansion. “In there. Frank’s gathering evidence to bring neglect charges against her.”
“Or it may end up being classified as abuse, depending on how bad off the cats really are,” Connie added. Her fury was clear in spite of her restrained tone of voice.
I stared at the woman in the living room. She didn’t look like an animal abuser; in a pink lamb’s wool suit and ruffled blouse, she seemed more like someone’s matronly grandmother. She was wringing her hands and tears were cascading down her doughy face. I couldn’t keep but feel sorry for her. Then again, I hadn’t been upstairs yet.
“She’s probably a little bit crazy. She inherited the house from an elderly maiden aunt and lives here by herself,” said Denny.
“With eighty cats,” Connie broke in.
“She calls them her babies. Seems to know them all by name. She has moments of lucidity where she understands what’s going on—what she’s done—but most of the time, she thinks everything’s fine. Thinks the attic’s some kind of cross between Heaven and a penthouse flat.”
“How sad,” I said and truly meant it.
“Yeah. It really is,” Connie grudgingly conceded. “She’s voluntarily relinquished the cats. Now they can get the care they need.”
“They’re the lucky ones,” Denny said gravely. “It looks horrible but these guys are safe now. Or will be, once we get our butts moving and get ’em out of here.”
* * *
I won’t describe the details of the rescue but suffice it to say the vision of those poor kitties all squished together in that filthy, stifling attic isn’t something I’ll forget any time soon. Nor is the smell, which seemed to scorch my nostrils and stay with me for days. I was surprised that people didn’t stop me on the street and say, You reek of cat pee! but I guess it was psychosomatic.
We were actually very lucky: when we got the cats to the hospital and checked out, there was no sign of distemper or the dreaded ringworm, bane of furred animals and the people who care for them. Most had varying degrees of upper respiratory infection, and all were terribly underfed as well as infested with more varieties of parasites than an Amazon sloth, but the majority would be fine within a matter of days. Physically fine that is; who knew how many of them had grown up in that squalor? Second-generation hoardies tended to be almost feral, having been starved for human affection from birth, and they always required special attention. Before I left the hospital that evening, I had committed to fostering three and possibly four two-year-old siblings once they were out of detox. With a pang of nostalgia, I admitted that Mike’s adoption had been perfectly timed, leaving me free to deal with these very needful beings.
It was about nine o’clock when we finally finished up. The hospital staff was still at it and would be for hours more, but the rescue effort was successfully over: all cats had been removed and every aspect of the filthy conditions documented with both photographs and video reports. In spite of the damage only affecting a small portion of the house, the Housing Authority had declared the place unfit for human habitation until the attic was cleaned and sanitized. I was beyond exhausted but the cats were safe and my work was done.
Denny Paris had offered to take me home. When I got out to the parking lot he was already waiting.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “One of the medical assistants needed help with a feisty male. I showed her how to scruff him so he couldn’t move his head and then get him into a football hold. Funny thing is, once he was in the hold, he settled down instantly. Just scared, I guess. And who can blame him? He’ll probably be a sweetheart once he feels more secure.”
I started to open the car door, but Denny caught my arm. “Lynley, can we talk for a minute?”
I’d stripped off all the paper coverings along with my scrubs coat and changed pants and shoes but I still felt odious. “Sure, Denny, but I’m pretty gross. I can’t wait till I get home and into a hot bath. Or two.”
“You and me both!” He took a drag off his cigarette. “I just want to finish this.”
“I didn’t know you smoked,” I said, watching the ghostly vapor waft away in the evening breeze. The sky was that dusky violet which could signify either sunset or sunrise. If I hadn’t known, I could have gone either way.
“Only in times of great stress.”
“Ah.” That was comment enough; I’d probably be smoking too after the day he’d had. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“You been following the Sinclairii murder case?” he asked out of the blue.
“I watched the news for a while after our excursion, but I haven’t seen a word. Why? Did something happen?”
“They found out whose lens it was.”