Stuff (16 page)

The Doctor began collecting cats a few years after Pamela started seeing her. At first the cats were an amusement. She found one in her garden, and she thought it was "delightful." She decided another would be "twice as delightful," then she began going to cat shows and brought home more. She was particular about caring for them. She ordered meat from an out-of-state packing company and mixed it by hand with bread. Neutering or spaying was out of the question because that would alter the natural order of things. Animals were meant to experience the totality of life, and according to her Reichian views, that included sex. (Such teachings may have shaped Pamela's sex life as well.) The realities of feline reproduction led the Doctor to keep the male and female cats separated, but somehow nature always won out. The females started to reproduce, and her cat census rose. Still, the Doctor cared for her cats very well, and she kept them out of her clinic offices. She hired people to feed them and clean up after them. Early on, the health department inspected regularly, since the animals were, the Doctor claimed, part of her research, and veterinarians were brought in when needed. But at that time, such oversight was more voluntary than mandatory.

The Doctor soon outgrew her offices and purchased a seven-story building with more than fifteen thousand square feet of space. She intended for it to be a cultural center, but instead she filled it with stuff. (Among the animal hoarders we have interviewed, many of them hoard things as well.) The top two floors held her many collections. Piled to the ceiling were clothes, canned food, carpentry tools, sculptures, and boxes filled with God knows what. Only a small pathway snaked through the middle of the hoard on each floor. The Doctor was ferocious about protecting her things. None of her patients dared to touch any of them. The middle three floors were devoted to cats. The Doctor had arranged for cages along the walls to accommodate her cats, which now numbered near two hundred. She lived on the first floor, amid a growing hoard. (Even the elevator was piled high with newspapers.) The second floor contained her office. Though cluttered, it was at first free of cats. Then the sick ones moved in. Gradually, the whole building became overrun with cats.

The Doctor's interest in cats soon turned to rescuing them from the streets of New York City and protecting them from shelters that euthanized them and from people she deemed unfit to care for them. She spread her mission to her patients, encouraging them to make the "responsible decision" when they saw a cat in need. Images of cats being euthanized, neglected, or abused became searing reminders of their duty. In the Doctor's world, and by extension in the world of her patients, these images required action. Under her tutelage, her patients thought of themselves as the only people who understood the plight of cats and the only ones who could rescue them. These beliefs kept them from seeking help elsewhere when they became overwhelmed with caring for the Doctor's cats. In time, more than a dozen of the Doctor's patients collected cats. They combed the streets looking for strays and other cats in need.

Just as the Doctor's interest turned to cats, Pamela, now in her early thirties, returned from Vietnam transformed by what she had seen there. "The same way I swore when I was eight years old that I would get a big body, I swore that I would help every child and every animal that came my way," she said. Becoming a member of the Doctor's cult was a natural progression. Her collecting began when she learned that her neighbor was going to "castrate" several kittens. "I was against castration, so I took two kittens." Shortly after that, on her way to group therapy, "this big gray male cat sprang so hard into the tree that his legs were shaking. He was so tough and so cute, I rescued him, and I took him home." Then Pamela made a decision that led her further into animal hoarding. "I thought it would be nice for them to have kittens, because, you know, for nature. So they had many litters of kittens. I tried to find homes for them, but everyone wanted to alter them." Pamela became responsible for a growing herd. When she got to fifteen cats, she had to move from her small apartment in the West Village to a larger one uptown—a fifth-floor walkup with four rooms. For the next five years or so, her life was filled with work, cats, and men. Cats filled an important role in her life. During one of our interviews, she reflected:

Because I never got any love, any touching, feeling, love that you need to get—somebody once said, "You never bonded with your mother." Well, my mother was not a bad person; she was charming and nice. My friends loved her, but she was in la-la land. So with the animals, you always knew where you were with them, and they were pure love, all of them. And if they didn't like something you did, they told you right away, and they didn't hold any grudge, and they were just love. But I didn't understand that's what it was; I was just drawn to it.

By the time she reached her thirty-sixth birthday, her collection had grown to thirty-five cats, and it had begun taking over her life. Her career was still thriving, but the parties and the men no longer interested her. The Doctor encouraged her to find a larger place to accommodate her cats. She settled on a sixteen-room house in Queens in a block where several of the Doctor's other cat hoarding patients lived. By this time people had learned that Pamela rescued cats and began leaving them on her doorstep, a common occurrence for animal hoarders. She also seemed to attract pregnant cats. Pamela and others in the Doctor's cult shared the belief that they had the ability to understand and communicate with cats in ways that other people could not and that cats understood them and their mission.

At this time, the Doctor began to depend on Pamela and her other patients to care for her own growing herd of cats, which now topped six hundred. At first Pamela worked for her in exchange for the therapy she was receiving. As time went by, her therapy and her own career seemed to give way to caring for the Doctor's cats, and before long she seldom spoke with the Doctor about her own problems. The Doctor's relationship with her patients shifted as the demands of her cats began to overwhelm her. No longer were her patients the center of her attention; all her energy—and that of her patients—centered on caring for and protecting cats. They protested at cat shows and shelters. They spoke out against the neutering of cats and rescued any they found on the streets. Pamela even recounted physically confronting a drunken man over the kitten he was carrying: she pulled it from his arms and leapt into a taxi, which sped away as the man sprawled on the hood of the car to stop them. Patients who did not participate in these kind of activities began drifting away.

None of the patients who stayed would have dared to neuter any of their animals. To do so would have meant certain banishment. Lesser transgressions, such as not working enough with the cats, drew punishment, and the Doctor's punishment could be brutal. For many years, she seemed to single out Pamela for the harshest treatment. Whenever Pamela made a mistake or failed to carry out some chore with the cats, she was forced to slap herself, sometimes for long periods of time, with other patients counting. This was, she admitted, toward the end, when the Doctor was losing it. But Pamela had been with the Doctor for so long that she couldn't see the absurdity of what she was being asked to do. She simply accepted it. In retrospect, she realized how crazy this behavior was, how cultlike the group had become, and how very much the Doctor resembled her long-ago governess.

With so many cats, epidemics were inevitable, and often the Doctor would have twenty or thirty dead cats at once. At first she put the dead cats on the roof, where they mummified, but soon there were too many of them. Pamela and another patient began stuffing them in barrels filled with dirt, which they kept in the Doctor's basement. They would make periodic trips to New England to bury them.

When Pamela moved to Queens, her own cat population quickly got out of hand. Her census shot up to two hundred cats. She received huge shipments of meat and hired people to mix the food. Keeping the place clean became impossible. Feces covered the floors, and the best she could do was pile it against the walls. Neighbors became suspicious because of the smell and the daily meat deliveries. The cost began to overwhelm her as well. She still had a good income, but all of it went to pay people to take care of the cats. After just a few years, she didn't have enough money to pay the mortgage or her taxes. She lost the house to foreclosure and had to move.

She and the cats ended up in a house with another of the Doctor's patients, but the situation did not improve. Pamela, now in her mid-forties, spent most of her time caring for the Doctor's cats and could no longer work. Up at 3:00
A.M.
, she was at the Doctor's until nightfall, when she went home to care for her own cats.

Looking back on it, Pamela saw that many of her cats were suffering. "I was careless with them. I did the same thing to the animals that my mother did with me," she said. She remembered one cat dying because she was just too tired from working all day at the Doctor's to give him his seizure medication. Finally, the neighbors sued, the health department came, and the ASPCA was called. Pamela panicked. She rented a large truck, loaded up as many of her brood as she could manage, and brought them to a shelter outside of town, hoping to get them all back after the raid. But the ASPCA raided the shelter as well and, according to Pamela, "slaughtered them all." Pamela returned to the shelter with a film crew to try to document what had happened. She found about forty of her cats still alive and "rescued" them once again. Pamela now had no money and no career. She and her cats moved in with yet another patient who had cats of her own. Money trouble plagued them both, and the two women fought. By Pamela's own account, after one fight she nearly killed her roommate, who kicked her out but kept the cats. "I didn't have any cats suddenly," she told me. "I was homeless, and in a way it was the most unbelievable liberation. I had nothing." For a time, she slept on the floor of a factory, let in each night by another friend who worked there.

Despite her "liberation" from her own cats, and despite the upheaval in her life, Pamela's work at the Doctor's continued unabated. She worked from the early hours of the morning until late at night, but still the Doctor wanted more. Pamela slept only three hours each night and lost so much weight that she became little more than a skeleton. The Doctor stuck her with needles when she didn't hold the cats just right for their shots. Pamela toiled in slave-like conditions. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew this was wrong, but she felt powerless to end it, as if she were eight years old again and dealing with Mademoiselle. Finally, at the end of a long day, the Doctor sent her out on an errand. At fifty-two years old, dressed like a charwoman and smelling of cat urine, she started to run. She ran block after block through Manhattan until she felt that she was a safe distance away. She never saw the Doctor again.

Pamela set about the task of rehabilitating herself. She went on welfare and began collecting food stamps. At a homeless shelter, she learned upholstery, which led to several small jobs. Once she even got a small film contract. She realized that she had to stay away from animals simply to survive. To make sure she did, she issued what she said was a psychic message to all cats in need: "Cats, stay away from me. I can't help you anymore." And they stayed away, except for three cats in her apartment and one in her freezer, which she hadn't yet put to rest. Still, she remained true to her basic mission, "to rescue every cat that came my way," something she had done faithfully for twenty years. Luckily, either cats in need were now staying away or she failed to notice them.

When I asked Pamela if she thought her capacity to care for animals was healthy or enjoyable, she said, "I don't know that it ever was ... I didn't let myself really enjoy it and feel them ever, until this last period now with these animals, and a little bit as I went along. But I've identified with them so much, and I could see my suffering in them, even though they weren't suffering."

Based on the few studies on this topic and our interviews with several dozen animal hoarders, we surmise that people who hoard animals have several features in common. Most are female, well over forty years old, and single, widowed, or divorced. Cats and dogs are the most frequent animals hoarded, and the numbers vary widely but average around forty, with a few cases of well over one hundred. In about 80 percent of cases, dead, dying, or diseased animals can be found on the premises. Authorities identify between seven hundred and two thousand new cases of animal hoarding nationwide each year. Because only the most severe cases get reported, this is undoubtedly an underestimate.

At the core of most animal hoarding cases is a special feeling for animals, a sense of connection that was hard for the people we interviewed to articulate. Pamela described it as "pure love," while others we interviewed described it as "beyond love" and uncomplicated by less worthy human emotions. Animals were seen as making few demands, while providing unconditional love and devotion. One of our interviewees even sheepishly admitted that she cared more for her dogs than she did for her husband or children. Another odd feature we observed was that the hoarders became more animal-like in their daily habits over time. Their homes were turned over to the animals, which seemed to have greater access and privileges than the people living there. Many said that they wanted their animals to be free and "natural," and so they had no rules for the animals' behavior. They were allowed to eat, sleep, and even relieve themselves wherever they wanted.

Most animal hoarders experienced neglectful, abusive, and/or chaotic childhoods in which rules were absent or hopelessly inconsistent. Pamela grew up without any close connection to her parents and with an abusive caretaker. For her, animals were more reliable and affectionate companions than family members. The frequency with which we have seen this pattern and have heard animal hoarders say that they cared more about animals than about people has led us to think that animal hoarding may be a form of attachment disorder in which already frayed human bonds are easily broken and replaced by bonds with animals, which serve as surrogates for family. One animal hoarder we interviewed insisted that she wanted to find someone to love but hadn't been able to do so. Her cats, she said, "keep my love alive until I can find someone to love." She did not seem to realize that the condition of her home would dampen the enthusiasm of even the most ardent suitor.