My grandmother is unfortunatly the first stereotype to a T. She collects mostly animals. She is an animal hoarder -- it is a sickening disease. She has been known to have 20 or 30 dogs and 100-200 cats at a time. The dogs would be tied to anything in the yard or driveway. She would breed them and keep puppies. The cats would run free through the house and the outdoors, constantly breeding. She would keep the kittens. My mother and aunts had a terrible childhood. They were not able to go play with their friends because they had too many chores at home -- cleaning cages, mostly.

My mom and aunts have been harsh on her these past few years. We've spayed and neutered most of her cats (and for some reason these were always the ones to be eaten by bears and coyotes) and the big fire wiped out alot of her cats, she is now down to maybe 5 or 6 cats. Unfortunatly 4 of them are unaltered so she will soon have more I'm sure. Now down to 3 dogs. We got them all spayed thank goodness. Not before Hildi had three litters, Nikki had two, and her Border collie had one when she was only 11 months.

My mom and aunts go up ther her shack about once a year to clean out her property. Basically they force it on her. My mom remembers going into one room. She opened the door, got it about 1/4 open and it stopped. She shoved and shoved and finally poked her head in. The entire room was covered literally from the ground to the roof with old newspapers. Took forever to get them all out. There was poop on the counters, pee and poop all over the bed, in the bathtub. Everywhere. Now she has another crazy lady living with her so she's keeping it much cleaner. Sometimes collecting is a very dangerous thing..becomes obsessive, and you don't care about anything else.

As for myself, I collect anything to do with wolves and Belgian shepherds. My entire house is covered in wolves. I have 5 wolf blankets hanging on my walls, one on my couch, one on my bed...Wolf pictures framed in every room, a wolf shower curtain, wolf bathroom towels, kitchen cloths, ceramic/glass wolves, wolf plates, hanging decorations, shirts, mugs, picture frames...Anything nice I can find. I grew up collecting things. I went from thing to thing though. I had My Little Ponies, and anything to do with horses mostly. I guess I started out with cats though, and began to like dogs alot. I had a Pokemon phase too, that was a big one.