OK, admit it: You collect something.

For my mom, it was owl figurines, and for my boss it’s penguins. My friend has Boyd’s Bears. I collect moose and books. And pigs. And stamps and books and lapel pins and day lilies. And did I mention books?

My own collecting habits are evidence that many of us in this world are gatherers. We start hauling in pieces of what appeals to us to make little collections that keep getting bigger.

This type of collecting is fairly innocent and usually fun — until idiosyncrasies of the brain get involved. As one current reality TV show has demonstrated, the outcome for some people can be hoarding. In these cases, collecting creates an uneasy and often unsanitary environment.

And when such collectors also have good hearts and feel the need to improve the world by focusing on helping animals, the “hobby” quickly spins out of control.

These folks, usually well-intentioned, are known as animal hoarders.

We’ve all seen the stories: The state comes into the home of a kindly but confused elderly woman whose house is overrun with cats. The animals are ill, and the woman is faring little better.

Such instances are not as unusual as we may think, and it’s a community problem.

In fact, in 1997, Tufts University, recognizing just how serious a concern this is, developed the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium to study this pathology. According to the Tufts Web site:

“Animal hoarding, previously known as ‘collecting,’ is a poorly understood phenomenon which transcends simply owning or caring for more than the typical number of pets, and affects every community in the U.S. It has serious consequences for people, animals and communities. New cases are reported in the media each day, with dozens of others unreported, and still more undetected.”

Our stereotype of the animal hoarder is a single, older woman, but in reality, some of the people we might least suspect may in fact be animal hoarders. The Tufts group has noted that the problem has been found among men and women of all ages and positions, even health care professionals and folks in the veterinary sciences.

Typically, too, we expect the hoarded animals to be cats, but in fact any animal can be hoarded, including farm animals. Domestic animals are the most common, but horse and even wild animal hoarding are not unheard of. Numbers of animals held by hoarders vary; Tufts has statistics on some homes that held a thousand or more dogs or cats; smaller hand-held pets such as mice or birds could go beyond that.

The fact remains that each year, an estimated 250,000 or more animals fall victim to people with this pathology. One academic study in 2000 by health department professionals estimated that annually, animal hoarding occurs in 5.3 out of every 100,000 people.

This means that in Lawrence each year, five or six people could be discovered to be animal hoarders.

These numbers don’t take into account animal cruelty cases, such as puppy mill owners who are fully aware of the deplorable and inhumane conditions in which they are keeping their animals. For these people, it’s all about the money.

Rather, the people who exhibit the hoarding pathology truly believe that they are helping unfortunate animals, even though they don’t have the money to feed their pets or to provide any kind of medical care for them.

Such people aren’t even aware of the need to allow the animals to go outside for their bathroom needs. Frequently the animals urinate and defecate inside the house, and the owners never clean up after them. They may all live, eat and sleep in several inches of fecal matter that is burning the food pads of the animals.

Dead animals, too, go unrecognized and are left to decay in such houses. The owners don’t seem to understand that the animal is deceased.

Residences such as these cannot be saved. Once someone uncovers and reports the situation, the houses usually must be razed because of the unsanitary health conditions. Many of the animals salvaged are so ill and starved that they must be euthanized rather than adopted out.

For the hoarders, post-intervention treatment is mandatory. Without it, Tufts says, recidivism approaches 100 percent. Legal mandates to these people to stay away from companion animals go unheeded. They simply find new living quarters and begin their quests anew to “save” lost and abandoned pets.

We at the Lawrence Humane Society want everyone in our community to be aware of the fact that this mental illness exists, and we ask everyone to be vigilant. If you know an animal lover who never allows you into his or her home, or who frequently talks of yet another animal he or she has rescued but does not seem to have taken to a shelter, we encourage you to call us at 843-6835. You could be helping save both the animals and your acquaintance.

— Sue Novak is vice president of the board of the Lawrence Humane Society.