Is this Britain's strangest pet owner? Meet the woman with 40 CATS

[ENT]

WE'RE a nation of animal lovers but none of us has quite as many as retired secretary Marlene who shares her house with her 40 cats.





The cat enthusiast is surrounded day and night by the 40 felines who follow her around her home.

They are groomed and bathed every day, a procedure which can see Marlene up until the early hours of the morning as she prepares them for shows.

The unusual pet owner spends around £200 a week on the felines' food and although she received funds following her mother's death to feed the cats, she admis the money is running out.

Marlene's mother died nine years ago leaving her 14 pedigree Persians to add to her own 26 cats.

She said: "The cats never upset me, I like people but sometimes they can be aggravating. I have closed myself down to the only pleasure which is being with the animals I'm surrounded by."

Her best friend Coleen admitted that she had named Marlene 'her eccentric friend.'

Coleen added: "Her life is her cats. I couldn't imagine Marlene without her cats. I couldn't cope with 40 but she does."

Marlene's story is one of many exposed by recent Channel 5 programme Pet Horders.

Another pet horder came in the form of Deb and her family who share their Yorkshire home with a brood of chickens.

Her passion for poultry started when she passed a farm snd was overwhelmed by the shrieking of chickens being kept in terrible conditions.

She crammed 60 birds into her car and headed home.

Since then, Deb has sold the business that she used to run and now nurses and cares for them all on a full-time basis. Deb plans to rescue and care for more abused animals, no matter what species.

Is this Britain's strangest pet owner? Meet the woman with 40 CATS | Weird | News | Daily Express

[BaitongBoy]

Chicken for dinner tonight?...Sorry...

[ENT]

How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy
Jaroslav Flegr is no kook. And yet, for years, he suspected his mind had been taken over by parasites that had invaded his brain. So the prolific biologist took his science-fiction hunch into the lab. What he’s now discovering will startle you. Could tiny organisms carried by house cats be creeping into our brains, causing everything from car wrecks to schizophrenia?

NO ONE WOULD accuse Jaroslav Flegr of being a conformist. A self-described “sloppy dresser,” the 53-year-old Czech scientist has the contemplative air of someone habitually lost in thought, and his still-youthful, square-jawed face is framed by frizzy red hair that encircles his head like a ring of fire.

Certainly Flegr’s thinking is jarringly unconventional. Starting in the early 1990s, he began to suspect that a single-celled parasite in the protozoan family was subtly manipulating his personality, causing him to behave in strange, often self-destructive ways. And if it was messing with his mind, he reasoned, it was probably doing the same to others.

The parasite, which is excreted by cats in their feces, is called Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii or Toxo for short) and is the microbe that causes toxoplasmosis—the reason pregnant women are told to avoid cats’ litter boxes. Since the 1920s, doctors have recognized that a woman who becomes infected during pregnancy can transmit the disease to the fetus, in some cases resulting in severe brain damage or death. T. gondii is also a major threat to people with weakened immunity: in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, before good antiretroviral drugs were developed, it was to blame for the dementia that afflicted many patients at the disease’s end stage. Healthy children and adults, however, usually experience nothing worse than brief flu-like symptoms before quickly fighting off the protozoan, which thereafter lies dormant inside brain cells—or at least that’s the standard medical wisdom.

But if Flegr is right, the “latent” parasite may be quietly tweaking the connections between our neurons, changing our response to frightening situations, our trust in others, how outgoing we are, and even our preference for certain scents. And that’s not all. He also believes that the organism contributes to car crashes, suicides, and mental disorders such as schizophrenia.

How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy - Kathleen McAuliffe - The Atlantic





Crazy?

Yup.

I have a neighbour,a cat lover, caught toxoplasmosis and did nothing about it for years, looks just as skinny as the top two cat lovers.

Also a strange character,....nice guy in some ways,.....but a hoarder par excellence!

Gets on well with the paranoid schizophrenic "midnight rambler" prowler, also a hoarder,....nicks little things all over the place and stores them in his private museum of an abode,....place is FULL of stuff he'll never use.

Does anyone else know of the strange behaviour of these cat lovers?

An ex-wife of mine is also a cat hoarder, lives on her own out in the scrub in Queensland,...bi-polar and crazy as a chook.

A daughter in law of mine also does the same,...loves cats, mad as a dish rag, orders stuff on line, it all arrives COD, and is piled up, some of the stuff unopened, in several rooms.

I'm happy to say that my grand-daughter escaped and doesn't appear to have the same tendencies.

[BaitongBoy]

The parasite, which is excreted by cats in their feces

Don't eat cat shite...simple...

[Latindancer]

This sounds like a confession from ENT. Your NEIGHBOUR, eh ? SUUUURE !

[ENT]

I knew you'd turn up,....cat lover.

[billy the kid]

visited a once posh woman friend who had a house full of cats
didn't visit her again.
felt a bit sorry fo her.
her house just stank and my heart sank.

[harrybarracuda]

But if you didn't know and just heard "a woman with more than 40 pussies"......

[billy the kid]

pussy riot.

[baldrick]

frizzy red hair

there is the problem right there

[TonyBKK]

Where I come from it's illegal to have that many animals in one house...

There's a name for this type of mental illness: Pet Hoarder

From Petmd.com:

How many cats are too many?

Do I really need to answer this question? (And yes, I realize this blog will piss off people who own more than 6 cats!)
Unfortunately, I do.
Years ago, I had two women who brought their cat into the emergency room at the University of Pennsylvania. Both women reeked so badly of cat urine, I couldn’t even close the exam door due to my eyes burning from the ammonia smell. When I asked these women some questions about the cat’s environment, they couldn’t answer how many cats they had. I asked, "10? 20? 60? 100?" Their reply? "Over 100."
These two women, who were cat hoarders, didn’t notice that their cat was ill until it was on death’s door, since they had so many in their "environment." This cat was severely dehydrated, emaciated, and had a body condition score of 1 out of 9 (See Purina’s body scoring system that we veterinarians use to evaluate weight). This cat weighed just under five pounds (instead of nine), and was so lethargic it couldn’t even lift its head. (It ultimately died despite several days of hospitalization and life-saving care.)
So, can you imagine having so many cats that it prevents you from adequately being able to care for your pets?
You may hear of the occasional crazy "hoarder" revealed on the news — people with underlying mental disorders who live with a hundred cats hidden in their house (hopefully nowhere near your neighborhood). Sadly for the cats, the m.o. of your cat lovin', urine-smelling, disheveled animal hoarder is quite sad. Most hoarders are unmarried and live alone (and you thought it was hard to find a date with just two cats…). Hoarders also come from all different socioeconomic backgrounds and typically are over sixty years of age. To top it off, over three-fourths of hoarders are females, once again giving the single white female a bad rap. Some more scary numbers?

• In 69% percent of hoarding cases, animal urine and feces was found accumulated in living areas.
• More than one in four (> 25%) of hoarders’ beds are soiled with animal feces.
• 80% of reported cases had dead or sick animals present in the house.
• 60% of hoarders didn’t acknowledge that they had dead or sick animals in the house.
• Over 65% of hoarding cases involve cats (although some also hoard small dogs and rabbits).

While most hoarders don’t read my blog, my general advice to any cat owner is this: I usually recommend no more than four to five cats total. Sometimes I offend my fellow veterinarians, veterinary technicians, and friends when I tell them my cut-off for crazy is six cats. After that, I think it’s medically unhealthy.
If this pisses you off, I’m sorry, but I’m looking out for the welfare of the cats and dogs here. Try finding a veterinarian who has that many. It’s rare; because we know that having this many cats can result in severe behavioral problems. Of course, if you ask ten different vets, you may get ten different answers. That said, until those nine other vets write an opinionated blog about it, I still recommend no more than four or five cats per household.
So what’s the problem with having so many cats? Animal behavior specialists often see more problems in multicat households. Having too many cats may result in urination problems (i.e., not in the litter box!), intercat fighting and attacking, and difficulty in monitoring general health. For example, checking the litter box to see if one cat has a urinary tract infection is more difficult when you have six cats.
So how many cats should you get? I have to say that I initially enjoyed having a one cat household. That is, until I experienced a two-cat household. Now I’m a firm believer in having two cats together. Seamus, my 13-year old, grey and white tabby, was more friendly and affectionate to humans (more to the point — me!) as an only child. When I adopted Echo (who sadly, passed away in April from severe heart disease), I got less "loving" from Seamus. He wanted to spend all his time playing with Echo instead. Echo and Seamus played together (constantly), slept together, wrestled together, and loved each other up. Once Seamus and Echo befriended each other, I was officially demoted to the source of food and to litter box duty. Seamus’ quality of life, social skills, and exercise level definitely improved while he had Echo in his life. After seeing this, I do firmly believe that cats do benefit from having a companion to play with. *Note, a companion or two — not six or one hundred.
I’ve been fortunate to have cats that get along (despite the first few tumultuous days of hissing and cat introductions). For that reason, yes, I support having a few feline friends together.
Do you have any long-term cat companions who hate each other? What behavioral problems have you noticed?

Dr. Justine Lee

[patsycat]

Being a cat lover, i must admit my full house was only four and a half. He would visit occasionaly and eat, but lived next door, his wife and daughter lived with me,

they were outdoor cats, so no smelly litter tray to clean out unless they were ill.

But must admit, if i had a big house with lots of land i would probably adopt lots of lost kittie or doggie souls that no one else wants. And a couple of goats.

The people who have 20 30 etc animals should be put on a register to not have any animals anymore. How the hell can they cope, they can't and their house stinks etc.

But, they don't see it that way, sadly.

Interesting, there is a supposed law in Switzerland that you cannot have only one cat, you gotta have two. So when you are out working or pubbing all day they have a little cat friend to play with and run havoc to ease the boredom.

And if you go to the cat rescue place to get one, it's like a hitler regime with questions and home visits etc. which is good. But they go through your house with a fine toothed comb.

All my cats were rescue cats or came with a flat that i rented. And stayed with me for at least 14 years. And were loved.

That woman just went over the top, but i feel for her.

I woke up one morning and my three plus the neighbours two were all flat out on my bed.

[Thormaturge]

Cataholics even have their own religion.

[kmart]

Bet her neighbours love the dizzy cow.