Is Berwyn Cat Hoarder Home a Liability?

Many of us are of the mind that cats are filthy creatures. These odiferous filthy felines, in addition to offending your olfactory senses, can carry a litany of zoonotic diseases, including bacterial infections, fleas, ringworm, and rabies. We won’t even mention cat scratch fever.

Okay, so they’re not all bad. Cats are adorable, loving companions. However, when they are not treated properly by their owners, and not kept clean, they can present a danger to those susceptible to disease and infection. This is especially true for those owners who think bathing a cat is a bad idea.

It’s hard to keep your cats clean when you have more than 40 feline friends. A local Berwyn family had their house declared uninhabitable after officials responded to complaints about the smells coming from the home, reports the Chicago Tribune. Inside the home, officials found more than 40 cats and 3 dogs. On a second visit, they removed another 20 cats.

The copious cats could be a danger to the house’s occupants, including the married couple and their 14-year-old child. For example, recent studies have shown that cat ladies are far more likely to commit suicide. It’s not just loneliness either. There’s actually a bacteria in cat feces that leads to mental illness that makes violent suicide far more likely.

In addition to being a danger to the occupants, such a large herd of possible carriers could pose a danger to the neighbors as well. Those zoonotic diseases we mentioned earlier are far more likely to spread between the cats themselves, and the neighboring families and pets, when the cats are kept in such crowded quarters.

Should a neighbor, or a neighbor’s pet, catch a disease from the dirty dozens, the family’s negligence could cost them dearly. A person’s conduct is judged by the standard of the reasonable person. A reasonable person probably would not have more than 40 or 50 cats, nor would he live in a home that was so stained with urine and feces that it has been declared uninhabitable.

Such a living arrangement is simply a cat-astrophe waiting to happen.

Related Resources:



Consult a Chicago Personal Injury Attorney (FindLaw)


22 More Cats Caught in Berwyn Home (NBC Chicago)

Accused Cat Hoarder Made ‘Feline Stew’ with Dead Pets (FindLaw’s Phoenix Criminal Law News)

What about liability concerning my pets? (FindLaw’s Learn About the Law)


The Chicago Personal Injury Law Blog

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