Animals, children removed from filthy home
The stench of animal waste coming from a Cheektowaga home led to the arrest of a woman with almost a decade-long record of animal hoarding, authorities said Wednesday.
Police discovered 19 cats, a dog and a fish Tuesday evening in the house on Royal Palm Drive. Three children in the house at the time were taken to an aunt’s house, Cheektowaga Police. Lt. Jim Speyer said.
Linda Roehre, 48, was charged with child endangerment and animal cruelty, both misdemeanors.
The house, in a neighborhood east of Dick Road and south of Genesee Street, was condemned, Speyer said. It had holes in a wall, and its floors were warped by urine and littered with cat feces.
The state Office of Child and Family Services was contacted, he added. When police arrived, three of four teenagers in the family were watching television in the house, which was dark, had no heat and little food.
“Our concern is for the kids,” Speyer said. “We want to make sure the kids have a decent place to live.”
The animals were removed to the SPCA Serving Erie County, which has records showing that 37 pets have been confiscated from Roehre since 2001, authorities said.
Most of the animals removed Tuesday were young and in good physical condition. While the dog still was being examined, the cats will be available for adoption in the SPCA’s Walden Galleria satellite location and the main headquarters at 205 Ensminger Road in the Town of Tonawanda.
“In this situation, we were able to get in, in time, before these animals were suffering,” said Gina Browning, SPCA spokeswoman.
Both Speyer and Browning said local reports of animal hoarding seem to be increasing.
“The more that we’re learning about this as mental illness —as opposed to just a ‘crazy cat lady’ — the more we’re able to address it to help not just the animals who are victims, but to help those people,” she said.
According to one analyst of animal hoarding, collecting pets in large numbers is effort to take control of something.
"It is totally not about "how much I love animals,'‚" said Celeste Killeen. "It is all about power and control."
When animals are taken away from people with this compulsion, they often collect again. "This is the most insidious kind of animal abuse and neglect because it goes on for months and years," said Killeen, the co-author of "Inside Animal Hoarding" who is in the midst of doctoral psychology study. "And that's what's really sad about this."
Killeen, a social worker for a family-service agency in Boise, Idaho, wrote about a woman in a small Oregon town who had 552 dogs.
In an effort to prevent more hoarding after her arrest, the woman was allowed to care for two dogs that were neutered and microchiped. When her five years of probation recently ended, Killeen visited. "She's back at it again," Killeen said of the woman.
While Killeen could see five well-cared for dogs, she could hear many more making noise from a back room.
"You could tell there had to be 20 dogs at least," Killeen said. "It does repeat itself over and over again for a lot of people. Hoarding is really complex."
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