Animal Hoarding – What the Hell is That?

In which the author expresses disgust at the arrest of Ron Mason.

To “hoard” is to keep to oneself either something that other people do want – like canned meat – or something that other people don’t want – like a garage full of used plastic cups.

A hoard is a hidden supply or fund that is stored up. In wartime, hoarding is seen as very anti-social. Under military rule, people are expected to not stockpile goods for their own use, or participate in the black market, or abuse the rationing system. But in the case of wartime hoarding, we’re talking about a commodity that the government says it wants to share fairly with all the citizens (and actually wants for its soldiers and its war machine.) Cans of beans, sides of beef, gold coins, or silk stockings – you’ll notice that these are all considered desirable items. To be engaged in this type of hoarding, a person would have to hang onto a supply of something that other people want.

Well, nobody wants these damn cats. That’s the problem. These cats were thrown away by humans. They’re either abandoned domestic pets, or feral cats whose parents or grandparents were abandoned domestic pets. It would be a real good idea for any agency that claims to care about the welfare of animals, to concentrate their efforts on the people who dump their cats.

And then there’s the kind of hoarding that applies to stuff people don’t want, items that “don’t seem reasonable,” according to one of the talking heads in this video. Keeping stuff that either is, or appears to be, useless. And usefulness is in the eye of the beholder. My grandpa had a room full of little bits and pieces of wire and transistors and knobs and so on, that seemed useless to most onlookers. But he could fix your radio or TV.

Another kind of hoarding applies to stuff that people didn’t used to want, but now they do want it, and the former hoarders turn out to be astute business people. When people hoard baseball cards or comic books and then make some money off the items, we call them entrepreneurs. If they hoard paintings, we call them collectors, and shower them with praise.

Here’s a description of the pathology of the animal hoarder: “Because of their sheer numbers, these animals usually aren’t cared for properly. Many become so ill that they die or have to be euthanized.” Does this sound familiar? It sounds like an official animal shelter, to me. The point here is, by any definition you can formulate, animal shelters hoard animals. And the level of care in official shelters is not necessarily as good as what the free-lancers provide.

Admonishing any animal hoarders who happen to read their webpage, the Mayo Clinic says the critters “deserve to live healthy and happy lives, and that’s not possible if you can’t provide them with proper nutrition, sanitation and veterinary care.” So according to the medical establishment, what you’re supposed to do with the animals is hand them over to a government agency that can’t provide them with proper nutrition, sanitation, veterinary care or, in some cases, as we’ve recently seen, can’t even provide our little four-legged friends with shade to keep the sun off them.

This quote is even more ludicrous: “A hoarder fails to provide the animals with adequate food, water, sanitation, and veterinary care, and … is in denial about this inability to provide adequate care.”

You want to know who’s in denial? The police who arrest Ron Mason for providing the amenities to the cats, and then charge him with being a hoarder, which is by definition someone who fails to provide the amenities. Denial is when bureaucrats think their shelters provide better care than concerned individuals with limited means and loving hearts. Denial is believing that adequate care is something only the State is capable to provide. Denial is pretending that the killing of healthy animals, because official facilities are overcrowded, constitutes “adequate care.”

Supposedly, the societal problem here is that too many cats are running around the neighborhood. So this guy gives them a place to hang out, where they won’t annoy the neighbors. In which case, keeping them to himself is not a bad thing. It is, in fact, a very good and beneficial thing. He ought to be helped, encouraged and subsidized, not prosecuted. One of the officials in the video explains why it’s wrong for Mason to give houseroom to these animals – because “they get everything they need here.” Exactly! So they’re not out bothering the neighbors! What is the freakin’ problem?

To make compassion for animals into a crime is outrageous. They’re talking about “the recidivism rate is 100%.” All that means is, people who are willing to feed hungry cats will probably always be willing to feed hungry cats, no matter how drastically they are punished by the State. They’re making it sound like the guy is a pedophile or something.

To make compassion for animals into a disease is outrageous. This alleged mental health expert says, “They get a skewed perspective.” News flash: the people who think euthanization is preferable to living with Ron Mason are the ones with the skewed perspective. Maybe somebody should ask the cats for their opinion on the subject. The officials are talking about sentencing Mason to ongoing mental health treatment and medication. They want to “help this person be okay” by assigning him a minder who come in daily. This is an unbelievably stupid use of resources. The whole implication that something is wrong with Ron Mason is unbelievably stupid. This is Cold War era Soviet Russia bullshit. Any time a citizen does something the government doesn’t like, just label that citizen mentally ill. We’re about one step away from compulsory lobotomization.

Ron Mason doesn’t create these animals. He doesn’t manufacture them or give birth to them. On the contrary, he’s tried to stop more of them from being born, by having them neutered. Even if he wasn’t able to have all the cats operated on, there’s still more of them neutered than there would have been if he’d never taken responsibility for any of them. What’s the freakin’ problem?

The spokesperson for the authorities explains that hoarding is having a whole bunch of something. By this definition, you know who’s hoarding? Orphanages hoard children. Or at least, they used to. Maybe orphanages have disappeared, like mental institutions, which used to hoard mentally ill people, until the state closed them and let all the mentally ill people out on the street, where they are so much better off.

The California penal system hoards prisoners. They got a whole bunch of prisoners, and they want to add to the number by locking up some poor targeted civilian who takes care of cats. Who else is hoarding? The vastly overpaid and incompetent jokers who run Animal Services, that’s who. They hoard millions of tax dollars and produce nothing – certainly not services – for anybody, animal or human.

Related:

Cats, Ron Mason, and Human Health

Video of some people who have gone way overboard in response to the cats next door

and the whole story behind what you saw there

The picture on this page is by brownpau via this Creative Commons license

Tags: Animal Cruelty Task Force, animal hoarding, Animal Services, cat rescue, cats, LAPD, Los Angeles, police, Ron Mason