Last year: Is U.S. immigration policy a form of animal hoarding?
Animal hoarding is an accumulation of animals that has overwhelmed a person’s ability to provide minimum standards of care. … Rescue hoarders believe they’re the only people that can adequately care for their animals.
New Yor City is the perfect example of the above 2025 post. There is an affordability crisis for housing, necessitating government control of prices for 80 percent of rental units. Food is also unaffordable, which is why the city government has to set up its own government-run grocery stores. At the same time, there shouldn’t be any limits on how many humans can cross the U.S. border, with or without documents, and then come to live in NYC where they are guaranteed taxpayer-funded shelter.
Could the folks who hoard immigrants that they can’t afford to care for also hoard animals that they can’t afford to care for? The answer seems to be yes. “NYC budget provides $1.5M in freebies for furry friends — including new pet-food pantry” (New York Post, July 7, 2026):
A separate $750,000 will be allocated to launch a first-of-its-kind pilot pet-food pantry, the council’s animal welfare caucus said in a social media post last week.
Frontiers of biology: free/extra food decreases the population of a species.
“These investments will help reduce animal overpopulation, ease pressure on the shelter system, and ensure that New Yorkers are not forced to choose between basic needs and feeding their pets,” the group wrote.
People are looking for someone to connect with on an emotional level, to the extent the economics allows.
I see that in my parents’ generation that an average couple has a capacity to love (not indulge) and care (not helicopter) for a lot more than 2 children. What I have seen in my extended family is that when they don’t have enough children, the residual emotions get perverted to helicopter parenting, or taking care of some pets, or emotional overindulgence in some causes, or some other imbalance. In my grandfather’s generation, although much less educated, and probably with other vices I didn’t understand, they were more emotionally stable.
My mother in Colorado lives next to a lady who was attacked by an “autistic” kid (not Greta) when she was a vice principal. After having two cervical vertebrae fused from the attack, the neighbor has taken to sitting inside her house all day, on disability, smoking weed, and collecting pigs, parrots, dogs, cats, orphaned kids, roosters, etc. She was such a cool neighbor and sweet lady (mowed my mom’s grass for her), decades ago, and it is heartbreaking to see her in this state of being.
> In my grandfather’s generation, although much less educated, they were more emotionally stable
My grandparents were born in the early 1900s. My maternal grandfather was very emotionally unstable, mostly observable as anger. [I had to take a break due to the fun new malady called “trigeminal neuropathy”, shocks on my face and a intense point-like migraine triggered by things like having my windshield hit by a stray BB from some Virginny Huck Finn with an air rifle. “Git out of muh state, you damn Yankee hippy!” But…but…I too live in a former slave state, so…] On the paternal side my grampa was like a Keebler elf, a nice, affable little guy that everyone loved, especially the stash of fudge cookies. My parents more or less inherited those respective attributes. One would hope that the mix would cancel out and I would be some form of normal. But no, I’m more like House:
> House’s character has been described as a misanthrope, cynic, narcissist, nihilist and curmudgeon. [Courtesy Wickerpedia.]
So mom’s dad lived in a quiet small town, and coped with his issues in part due to the laid-back town and use of alcohol. We live in the quietest place we could find North/South/East/West of the Pecos, but it has given me flashbacks to living in Manhattan with all the new nuisances. I don’t think a whole herd of support goats would help me. But you are right NA, lack of funds is what is preventing me from buying a prime Wyoming ranch on 50K acres and living in the middle of it, like the ex-governor.