More than 130 cats hoarded by twin sisters in house of horrors (and four foot feces piles)

TEXAS -- Animal welfare officers and police were forced to wear gas masks as they removed more than 130 cats from the Houston home of 60-year-old twin sisters yesterday.

Conditions inside the home were filthy, with piles of rubbish, an overwhelming stench of ammonia, and a decomposing cat in the bathroom.

Officers were due to return to the home today to try to dig out several more cats, who have burrowed into 4ft high mounds of feces.

A spokesperson for the SPCA told Mail Online someone had called to alert them to the hoarding at the home where the sisters, who have not been named, lived.

One of the twins is believed to be suffering from cancer, and was taken away by ambulance. The other was seen watching, hand over her mouth, as their cats were loaded into a van.

'There's not one square inch of clean area in the house,' Harris County police spokesman J.C. Mosier told Houston Chronicle.

The retired homicide investigator added: 'I’ve never seen the inside of a house look like this,. Never in my life. And I thought I’d seen a lot of things until I saw this today.'

From the outside, the yard was a little overgrown, but there was little sign of the distressing conditions inside.

Every surface in the house was said to have been covered with waste from the cats, and many of the animals were said by the SPCA to be emaciated, and had hair loss and eye and nose problems.

In the garage of the home, piles of feces were said to be 4ft high, and several cats had hidden inside the mounds.

'They have burrowed into the mounds of feces like a rat would make a tunnel into a hill,' Mosier told KHOU 11.

Houston SPCA will be given medical treatment to the cats, before finding them secure homes.

'We’re going to work and make sure they get into loving homes. We’re going to work with our adoption partners or even place them in reputable sanctuaries,' Meera Nandlal, of SPCA, said.

 

 

No charges are expected to be brought against the women, but Mosier said police were trying to get them help.

'I don’t know that they’ll ever be able to totally recover from what’s happened to their house. But I hope there are people who can help us help these ladies. It’s such a sad situation,' he said.

(Daily Mail - Mar 28, 2014)