In 1999 Salem animal control officers entered a house on Apperson Drive and found 80 cats, 57 of them sickly and 25 dead, most piled in a freezer.

The case of Jack Cassell, a Fincastle retiree who pleaded guilty to two counts of cruelty to animals amid allegations his herd of 34 horses was starving, lacks such gruesomeness.

But the facts show the 79-year-old farmer had more horses than he could care for, which experts say is one of the hallmarks of a case of animal hoarding.

Commonwealth's Attorney Joel Branscom emphasized he hasn't studied animal hoarding, but, "There's some indication that could be the problem."

For his part, Cassell adamantly denies feeling any compulsion to collect horses. Cassell's problems with the law, he argues, have been caused by an overzealous judicial system, complaints by a self-righteous horse rescue group and a public that, helped along by biased reporting by the media, rushed to judgment.

He wants people to know this: "I did not starve my horses. I am not a culprit."

After examining Cassell's horses in December, veterinarian Tanya Hatchett found multiple horses had substandard body conditions and most lacked proper shelter and had inadequate food and water.

Officials seized five horses that scored a 2 (very thin) on a scale known as the Body Condition Scoring System. Other horses on the property, Hatchett said, scored between a 3 (thin) to 5 (ideal weight) or 6 (moderately fleshy).

Rob Hagan, Cassell's attorney, admitted some of the horses may have had ribs showing, but argued, a "newly trained, urban veterinarian" would have different views on proper horse care than Cassell, who learned about horses by living with them all his life.

Cassell, who's retired, lost about 90 acres of pasture after land he'd been leasing was sold more than a year ago. That cut the horses' grazing land by more than half, to about 50 acres. Still, Cassell maintains that his animals had plenty to eat. Each horse, he said, received a bale of hay a day. The horses also, according to Cassell, had access to four ponds and a 300-gallon water trough and a barn.

Botetourt County officials were well-acquainted with Cassell long before his case hit the news. Between 2002 and 2006, he was charged 17 times with allowing an animal to stray or trespass and was found guilty 14 times, according to court records.

For the past two years, Sgt. W.D. Horton said, he worked with Cassell to get him in compliance with Botetourt County's animal laws. "It didn't work out," he said.

In August, Pat Muncy, president and founder of the Roanoke Valley Horse Rescue, visited Cassell's farm to advise on proper horse care. Muncy had received calls from neighbors and passers-by concerned about the horses.

At that time, Muncy said, several horses were seriously underweight, an 18-inch pile of feces covered the barn's floor and the water trough hadn't been cleaned in a year.

Cassell said that after she visited his farm, Muncy pressured county officials to come after him because she coveted his pair of Arabian horses. "I feel like it was a conspiracy," he said.

The horse rescue association did adopt seven of the horses seized off of Cassell's property this winter (not including the Arabians), but Muncy says accusations that she was after Cassell's horses are ridiculous.

Each of the adopted horses, she said, has gained between 75 and 100 pounds since coming to live at the rescue.

Not only cats

Horse hoarders aren't as unusual as one might think.

In what appears to be an eerily similar case, a couple in Hanover, Pa., faced 27 charges of animal cruelty in February for depriving 33 horses of food, water and veterinary care.

Animal hoarders can be any age or gender and have been known to collect creatures big and small, said Gary Patronek, a clinical assistant professor at Tufts Cummings Veterinary School in Massachusetts and founder of the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium.

While Patronek wouldn't comment on Cassell's case specifically, he did say that it's a major effort for anyone to care for 34 horses, much less one elderly person.

"Think of what it costs to feed a horse versus a cat," he said.

That would be at least $100 a month per horse, Muncy said. She estimated it would take six people to care for that size herd.

Cassell isn't sure how long it took him to accumulate 34 horses. He began bringing horses to the farm when he moved to Fincastle from Richmond in 1997 to care for his elderly mother, who died in 2004.

Determining culpability

Animals, Cassell said, make him feel better when he's down.

"They're a comfort," said Cassell, who also owns two dogs, geese and ducks. "They don't talk back."

His nurturing nature, he said, comes from his mother, who took in more than 30 foster children during her life.

Some of his horses came to live at the farm because they were unwanted because of age, health or emotional problems. Many of the horses, he said, were thin when they arrived.

As part of his guilty plea to the cruelty charges, Cassell has agreed to reduce his herd to six horses by September. As of last week, Cassell said he had 12 horses on his farm.

Cassell wonders whether he really belonged in court or on the evening news.

In the United States, according to the Humane Society of the United States, an estimated 90,000 horses are slaughtered and processed for human consumption in Europe and Asia. Cassell could have avoided all his troubles if he'd just shipped the beasts off to be someone's dinner.

Said Hagan, his lawyer: "The animal protection laws should be geared toward moral depravity in human beings."

Many localities lack the knowledge to properly deal with animal hoarding, Patronek said. "They look at animals as the problem rather than a symptom of a problem."

Hoarders' impulses to accumulate animals won't go away simply because animal control seizes their animals, experts believe.

Without proper treatment, the consortium's Web site estimates 100 percent of animal hoarders will continue to hoard.

"As long as they've got breath in their body, they'll have animals," Patronek said.

0n the Net: www.tufts.edu/vet/cfa/hoarding