Former volunteers, vets, landlords feel that Ms. Peck is an ANIMAL HOARDER

Hoarders profess to love their animals, their children, and any other beings who fall under their control. Hoarders’ “love,” however, tends to be thinly veiled obsessive possessiveness. They use the word “mine” as insistently as a three-year-old in a sand box. They do not want to part with their animals under any circumstance––even death. Hoarders notoriously believe that life endured in any amount of misery is preferable to death. They often also refuse to recognize death. As ANIMAL PEOPLE documented, about one in five animal hoarding cases involves people who hoard the dead with the living. They may keep dead cats and dogs stacked in a closet or corner––or in bed with them. "In our experience, hoarders also typically do not spay or neuter, even when claiming to be “rescuing” and “sheltering” the animals in their care. Thus we find that most female animals seized from alleged hoarders are pregnant. But fear of death and the other facts of life to the point of pretending they don’t exist are only part of the phenomenon. Hoarders often hoard inanimate objects along with their animals: cigarette butts, soda bottles, newspapers, magazines, their neighbors’ trash, junk, etc. They are secretive too, usually living far enough from neighbors and the road to evade discovery for years." ANIMAL PEOPLE