Let’s just call this one, “When TV Genres Collide!”
Yes, just when you thought it couldn’t get any more shocking than watching the horrifying conditions in which people live on shows like “Hoarders” and “Intervention,” it does. Get worse, I mean.
So, as an animal lover, I didn’t want to watch the advance screener of “Animal Hoarding,” the new show on Animal Planet that delves into the lives of the deeply disturbed people who keep scores of animals in their homes. But I did.
We’ve all read the stories about house raids where dozens of animals are rescued from horrific conditions. I, for one, would like to put every one of those people in jail for life. That kind of animal cruelty must be punished. Right? Not necessarily.
Turns out that these (often) filthy folk have a mental health condition called “animal hoarding.” Nobody is just a lazy slob anymore — everyone has a condition!
“Animal Hoarders” — which is not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach — takes us into the homes of the kind of lunatics you read about when their homes are raided by Animal Control and they find scores of animals in conditions so filthy an animal wouldn’t want to live in them. The series includes everyone from a young couple with 50 cats to a woman with 28 dogs and cats, fish, a pig, a horse — and a big mess.
In other words, it’s the human (or inhumane) side of animal hoarders and the people (and animals) who love them.
Tonight’s premiere features Don, a man who lives with 30 cats inside his filthy home, and Bonnie, a dog hoarder, who at one time had 100 dogs living inside her home. Neither allows their animals outside, for fear that they will be harmed. Some animals have never even been outside!
I actually wretched when they showed their feces-and-urine-soaked homes, where excrement and urine covers computers, beds, clothing, walls — you name it. According to Animal Control, an ammonia level of 25 can be toxic to humans. Don’s urine-filled home had a level of 65! No mention of what diseases you can get from living with rotting cat bodies. Don’t ask.
What we learn is that these obsessive-compulsive people actually love animals too much — to the point where they believe that they are the only ones who can care for them.
Animal Planet brings in veterinarians, shrinks and clean-up crews, and their families take part in interventions. All that’s missing from the series is a case of free barf bags for every viewer.
Now that’s good TV!