Over the years, television has provided an accurate perspective of the problem — “affliction” sometimes might be the better descriptive word — of hoarding. We’re referring to people who have, in essence, ruined their lives, homes and also, perhaps, relationships because of having collected and having remained hellbent on continuing to collect virtual “mountains” of household and other items “too good” to throw away, sell or give away.

In many of the sad and otherwise troubling situations upon which television has focused, homes had become such a repository for the items in question, floors of the homes had become virtually impossible to walk across freely, and moving from room to room was challenging, to say the least.

How heart-wrenching it was sometimes to watch the cleanup process and witness the agony “planted” on the face of the owner when faced with parting with what had been collected and cherished presumably over many years.

But there is another kind of hoarding that, in the eyes of most right-thinking people, is much more serious and despicable. That hoarding involves animals — pets — kept in conditions beyond the capacity for those right-thinking people to stomach.

In many cases, referring to those conditions as cramped and squalid, causing animals to be faced with the prospect of starvation, does not begin to aptly describe the horrible prospects with which those animals are faced.

Such conditions ignore the fact that animals feel pain and the emptiness of hunger. They long for loving acceptance and offer true loyalty and comfort to those who provide for them.

Many provide confidence in terms of safety, whether or not they and their owners live in conditions generally acceptable but not affluent by any means.

Pets, like people, feel the comfort of warmth and, during hot summer days, the coolness of air conditioning — or, for pets, the peace of just relaxing with their owners wherever that relaxation might be.

They don’t deserve conditions like those under which nearly 100 animals were forced to live in a Bedford County house up until New Year’s Eve 2023 — when authorities acted in response to information, concerns and fears about animals possibly being abused, or at least being forced to live under filthy, unsafe conditions.

What those authorities found were the nearly 100 animals being kept in squalid cages stacked floor to ceiling. The stench was so noxious, volunteers had to wear gas masks in order to enter the Bedford Township home.

According to an article in the Mirror’s Sept. 27-28 edition, “many of the animals rescued from the property displayed untreated sores and other signs of severe neglect that required immediate medical intervention.”

The cages, often three or four high, were reported to be rusted and caked with feces and matted fur, with several of the cages containing animal carcasses.

It took more than a year for those keeping the animals to be handed down punishment, but the punishment meted out is indicative of the seriousness of the defendants’ crime against the helpless pets.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee, according to an Oct. 18-19 Mirror article, has approved a number of bills related to protecting the welfare of animals, including one that would authorize the state attorney general to prosecute large-scale cases of animal cruelty in counties where the district attorney lacks experience doing so.

Hoarding takes many forms, but Pennsylvania must be strict in protecting animals from becoming suffering victims of it.

— Altoona Mirror