Animal Hoarding

[wolf]

Every now and again you hear a story on the news about an animal hoarder. Yesterday 46 cats and 16 dogs were removed from a home in the Mayfair section of Philadelphia. Many of the animals were sick, covered in urine and feces, some had difficulty walking. I've heard anywhere between $43,000 and $93,000 worth of fines for animal cruelty and the the cost of the clean up of the residence.

The homeowner was also apparently hoarding a feces-covered mentally ill woman in her basement.

Strangely, I didn't know the mentally ill woman.

But I did know the hoarder.

She's a former coworker.

Stench Leads Rescusers to House with 62 Pets, Feces Coated Woman

PERHAPS HER OWN early life as an unwanted orphan prompted Jerri Diane Sueck to take hordes of cats and dogs into her Northeast rowhouse, where animal-welfare agents seized them yesterday.

But officials of the Pennsylvania SPCA said Sueck, 51 - a schoolteacher known to be into animal rescue "big time," according to someone who knows her - carried it too far.

They said she was housing 46 cats and 16 dogs in conditions so bad that welfare workers gagged at the stench.

The smell was so bad a mental-health worker and one of the neighbors feared there might be a dead body inside the house.