In January 2023, NBC News reported of a father and son arrested due to a hoarding case of 26 cats that disturbed a Long Island neighborhood. As rescuers investigated this hoarding situation in Islip, they discovered it was a sign of animal abuse too. Not only was the now condemned house filled with “floor to ceiling” garbage, the cats were locked in cages on the second floor. Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison announced that the cats “lacked food, water, and were covered in feces.”

This is one cat-hoarding story of hundreds that doesn’t always get the news coverage that it needs. Without someone taking the step to report and investigate a likely hoarder-house, the cats in these unhealthy situations will continue to struggle without proper care and multiply causing a greater issue.

Joan Deraval, a social worker who has been independently involved with cat rescue and TNR, has dealt with hoarder situations in Queens. TNR, short for Trap-Neuter-Return, is a humane method to reduce the number of community cats over time. TNR usually requires a trained individual who would lure the feral cat in a cage, fix an appointment to get them spayed/neutered and vaccinated, then after the cat(s) recover, return them to the area they were found in. 

One of Deraval’s experience with a hoarder comes from a woman in her 70s residing in an upper middle-class neighborhood who brought in a pregnant, semi-feral cat. The woman was dealing with financial problems, coping from a widowed life, and foreclosure of her home. Deraval attempted to get this woman some assistance with the cats when she and a neighbor reached out to her through social media. Deraval worked with the ASPCA and two other rescue organizations rescuing the woman’s estimated 20 cats over the span of a few years.

The ASPCA reports Animal Hoarding as a “complex issue that often encompasses mental health, animal welfare and public safety concerns. Animal hoarding is defined by an inability to provide even minimal standards of nutrition, sanitation, shelter and veterinary care—often resulting in over-breeding of animals, animal starvation, illness and even death. In some cases, guardians believe they are helping their animals and deny this inability to provide minimum care.”

Deraval encountered another hoarding situation within her own neighborhood. A woman in her 80s lived alone with painted-over and boarded up windows. A year and a half ago, Deraval’s elderly neighbor moved out of state with her family, finally leaving an opportunity for Deraval to step in and help with the cats still inside. Previously, the elderly woman stopped Deraval from helping, believing that Deraval was stealing the cats when she was trapping them for veterinarian care.

So what happened to the elderly woman’s cats?

Deraval discovered a garage-like structure in the backyard where several cats likely hid to stay warm and dry. With nobody living in this house, Deraval started trapping the feral-presented cats and getting them spayed and neutered. With the broken window, some cats were hard to distinguish from indoor or outdoor, but there were about six cats inside the house that acted feral. A couple months into rescuing the cats, Deraval found a note on the door with a number to one of the elderly woman’s friends who also did cat rescue. 

“I was going twice a day to feed the cats. And I would kind of take mental notes of ‘was there a cat in the window?’ because the back windows weren’t boarded or painted over. Or you know, what cats I saw go in and out. And over the time, I was also recording what cats I had spayed and neutered.”

After clearing out the house and finalizing that there were no more signs of cats lingering inside, workers closed everything off in the house. At this point, thanks to Deraval, fifteen cats were spayed and neutered. 

Fortunately, Deraval lives in the neighborhood and still takes care of those cats today. Another animal lover neighbor also looks after the cats with food, water and provided ten outdoor cat shelters for them. 

“I think the significant part of that story is that I was told that the woman had, I’m just gonna say, a very prestigious job. I mean she was college educated, she went to law school, and she had a very prestigious job. I guess she probably moved here when she retired. You know, she clearly at one point in her life had a job that required her to be very functional.

And you know, I think it does say something about the fact that in these situations you can’t, you don’t really know what people are about or what’s going on. I mean, I know there’s been a lot of research and I haven’t looked into it, but I think it does sort of show that people come from all different situations and end up in the same situation.” said Deraval.

The Animal Humane Society reports that over 250,000 animals per year are victims of hoarding. AHS defines Animal Hoarding as “an accumulation of animals that has overwhelmed a person’s ability to provide minimum standards of care. Those standards include nutrition, sanitation, shelter, veterinary care, and socialization.” 

And there is never a simple answer to “why” people end up hoarding animals. “The general public might dismiss hoarding as malicious, villainous, even evil — but hoarding is rarely these things.” The AHS explains that there is a “growing recognition” within law enforcement and the mental health community that hoarding cases need to be approached “with more empathy and less judgment”.

Diana Alvarez, a volunteer for MeowSquad since 2001, dealt with a hoarder situation in Woodside, Queens in 2020. She received a call to help with three (but found ten) cats, and managed to help the friendly cats through TNR and placed them for other rescue options.

But then Alvarez became confused when more cats would show up. A local neighbor informed her that the cats were coming from the basement of a man’s home. 

When Alvarez paid a visit to the home, the man explained that he allows all of his cats to freely roam in and out through an open window, and had more cats inside including two mom cats that had just given birth. When Alvarez checked out the basement, he showed her four litters of kittens on top of four more pregnant cats expecting soon. 

It started with two cats that were with him during covid. They started mating, bringing more cats, and “it’s nature” when some would stay or disappear. Mom cats would give birth on his bed, leaving fluid-stains behind. Some cats used the shower as a litter box. The man only provided his cats Temptations cat treats as their “meal”, having boxes and boxes of the cat treats stored in his basement. 

Alvarez was concerned about the cats’ health and safety, but needed permission to enter his property with traps and take the cats to be TNR or adopted out. 

The man initially refused to get the cats spayed and neutered because he believed the cats were happy and enjoyed this lifestyle, despite not having the financials to properly support dozens of these cats. With his cat-hoarding situation out of control, an upset neighbor placed wires and glass along his fence so the cats would stop coming over and using his vegetable garden as a bathroom. As a result, some cats become injured and dangerously lose their lives. 

Eventually the man agreed to let Alvarez help get some of those cats out of his property. With the help of MeowSquad, the majority of cats were able to be placed up for adoption. Today, some cats are still waiting to be adopted. Alvarez still has to go back to his home to get more cats fixed because the man didn’t allow her to take a few. This whole situation took a little bit over a year to resolve and is still ongoing.

While hoarding cases are not publicly disclosed enough, Joan Deraval and Diana Alvarez embody their role as a Queens hero rescuing cats from these unsettling situations.

“And I cannot say that my job is finished because I still have to go back and deal with him. Like I had to put up with him telling me, ‘No, that’s it. You took too many already! So leave these ones with me or else then I’ll be lonely.’ And I’m like, ‘Really? Really?’ Obviously, I am busy with other things. I barely have a personal life and I do have a full time job, a nine to five. 

But at the end of the day, I sort of enjoy helping. I feel like I can sleep better knowing that ‘okay, that was able to help this, you know, I still have to help that.’ But, you know, I try to take the time to understand and accept that, ‘Okay, I can’t help that one, but right now I’m helping this one. I’ll get back to it as soon as the opportunity is there.’ And It always happens.” said Alvarez.