Cat corpses and
garbage heaps

>> St-Henri tenants discover that
hoarding is no fun for anyone

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Tamar Kozlov and her husband knew there was something wrong with their neighbour’s apartment weeks before they discovered the nightmare inside apartment 501 at 617 St-Rémi. The young couple had moved into their St-Henri loft last September, and by the spring, they had detected a disturbing odour emerging from next door. As the weather warmed, the stench increased. “For about three weeks, we would just refer to it as The Smell,” says Kozlov, a documentary filmmaker.

The Smell got so bad that on June 13, she called the police to ask them to investigate. Eventually the building’s superintendent forced the door open. What they found inside was a stomach-turning hygiene horror show.

Heaping mountains of trash—filled garbage bags, plastic bottles, discarded furniture, plastic bins, any imaginable item—were stuffed in every nook and cranny. A filthy stove top was covered in unrecognizable gunk, and some sort of liquid lay in spots on the floor. There was an overpowering stench of urine. Somewhere in the maze of collected junk were 17 sick and dying cats. Then someone opened the refrigerator.

Inside were the corpses of 43 cats, some with syringes still protruding from them. In footage shot on a cell phone camera by a teenage cleaner hired by the landlord to clean the mess up, and forwarded to the Mirror, the cats are shown stuffed, much like the garbage, into every available square inch. In between the cats was human food, covered in maggots. The landlord, Sam Fattal, promptly changed the locks and evicted the tenants, identified in the Gazette only as a couple in their mid-50s. An attempt by the Mirror to contact them was angrily rebuffed.

THE SCENE OF THE GRIME: Mounds of trash, sick and dead cats

Disease debate

The SPCA removed the dead and living cats. Pierre Barnoti, the executive director of the Canadian SPCA, says this is probably a case of animal hoarding, a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). “In the U.S., it’s considered an illness, a pathological disorder,” he says. “Sadly, in Quebec, they’re considered animal lovers, but they need serious help.” Barnoti says he does know of several cases of animal hoarding in Montreal, but because the intent to harm the animals isn’t apparent, hoarders are not prosecuted.

“It’s extremely sad,” he says. “There are more people than we know living in that situation.” The 17 sickly cats pulled out of the loft had to euthanized, he says, because they were “time bombs” infected with feline panleukopenia, a deadly, highly contagious virus.

But if hoarding—and animal hoarding in particular—is a recognizable disorder, there remains a fair amount of debate surrounding it. Gail Adams, a facilitator for an obsessive-compulsive support group and volunteer at AMI-Québec, an advocacy organization for the mentally ill, says there is disagreement in the medical community about whether hoarding should be classified as an OCD, an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) or as something altogether different.

OCPD is closer to what much of the public considers classic OCD: rigid and perfectionist. “OCPD doesn’t usually bother the person who has it,” says Adams. “It bothers the people around him. But when someone has OCD, the person is very distressed. He knows he’s having these thoughts but can’t do anything about it. These thoughts become obsessive and are translated into actions, compulsion. Some experts think hoarding is a type of avoidance compulsion: they can’t bring themselves to make a decision or throw anything out.” Hoarders also have trouble organizing their belongings, making it extremely difficult to put anything anyway, she says.

But animal hoarders are usually misguided animal lovers. Barnoti says the tenants paid a lot of money seeking treatment for their cats, so Adams is puzzled that so many were found dead and stuffed in a refrigerator.

Festering ill-will

But in the meantime, there remain issues to be resolved at 617 St-Rémi. Fattal hired cleaners to get rid of the garbage, but tenants complained that garbage was left in the hallway for days. Lee Hammond, another neighbour, says he blames the garbage and cats for weeks of illness and missed work. His illness turned eventually to anger at the landlord for letting the situation carry on, and he says he plans to bring him to court. Other tenants may follow. Fattal was unavailable for interview by press time.

The Quebec Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Foundation can be reached at (514) 727-0012
or online at fqtoc.mtl.rtss.qc.ca. To
contact AMI-Québec, call (514) 486-1448 or visit
www.amiquebec.org.