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New Zealand animal welfare agencies are backing calls by the Australian RSPCA to have animal hoarding recognised as a mental illness.
Animal hoarding - when people are compelled to keep more pets than they can provide for - came under the spotlight earlier this month when well-known dog show judge David Balfour was charged with four counts of cruelty after a raid on his Woodville property.
More than half of the 160 cats and 80 dogs removed from the property by SPCA officers had to be put down.
The latest move to have hoarding seen as an illness was prompted by four cases of alleged animal cruelty against horses before Australian courts.
New South Wales RSPCA chief veterinarian Mark Lawrie, who has studied the syndrome, said that the suffering caused by hoarding was enormous but largely unseen.
There was clear evidence that many hoarders had mental health issues - they often saw themselves as animal "saviours" while being in complete denial of the suffering they were causing, he said. Most lived in squalor, surrounded by urine and faeces. Medical problems or injuries suffered by the animals were generally left untreated.
Bob Kerridge, chief executive of the Auckland SPCA, said there were at least a dozen cases of hoarding reported in the city each year, most involving cats.
"It is an illness," said Kerridge. "These people live in some pretty horrendous conditions. They are very difficult cases to deal with."
While charges could be laid under the Animal Welfare Act, and the Government had recently introduced a cat code of welfare, controlling the number of animals people could keep here was really a local body issue, he said.
However prosecution was often pointless as it failed to deal with any underlying problems, and did not stop recidivism. Rates of repeat offending were close to 100 per cent.
"Often they don't actually realise the sort of conditions they are living in, or that they are in fact doing anything wrong," said Kerridge.
Val Ball, president of Wairarapa SPCA and a former pedigree cat breeder, saw hoarding as a "form of depression". She recalled one case when officers removed 26 cats - most with ringworm or feline Aids - from a property, leaving the owner with just three.
"Within a year that woman was back to having 15 cats and, when she died not long after, we took another 26 cats away. She was spending more money on food for the cats then she was on food for herself."
In another case, a Taranaki woman was sentenced to 300 hours' community work, and banned from owning more than one cat and one dog for 25 years, after SPCA inspectors and police found 21 diseased cats and 23 dying spaniels on her property. The judge in the case described her home as a "concentration camp for animals".
"You have to look at that sort of thing as a mental illness," said Ball.
Staff of the Wairarapa SPCA are currently dealing with "a little old lady" in Featherston who is feeding 15 cats.
"All we can do is catch, desex and return them," said Ball. "The more cats there are, the more smell there is, the more neglect and the less chance these people have of having human companionship."
It is estimated Kiwis own between 1 million and 1.5 million cats.
Profile of an animal hoarder
* More often female - 76 per cent.
* Intelligent and often able to attract sympathy of others.
* Of varied work status and profession, such as nurses, psychologists and aged care workers.
* Usually single - more than half live on their own.
* Middle-aged to elderly - 46 per cent are 60 or older.
* Secretive and socially isolated.
* Cunning - will often move to avoid help or prosecution and notorious for starting up again elsewhere.
* In denial that animals are suffering despite overwhelming evidence.
* Even after conviction they do not stop unless psychiatric help is obtained.
* Any species may be hoarded but cats and dogs are the most common.
* The number of animals hoarded can vary, with between 30 and 200 being common.
Sources: Mark Lawrie, Gary Patronek
