When Safe Haven for Cats found them on a family farm outside Wake Forest in December, one black and scruffy feline had chronic herpes of the eye. Another needed surgery for throat polyps. A third died of diarrhea.

All were taken from a 70-year-old woman suffering from what Safe Haven describes as a classic case of animal hoarding.

"Everybody knows a cat lady out there," said Pam Miller, Safe Haven's founder. "It doesn't really have anything to do with the animals. It's the hoarding."

Each year, investigators find between 2,000 and 3,000 animal hoarders nationwide, said Dr. Gary Patronek, a Massachusetts veterinarian who studies the problem.

That's a conservative estimate, he said. Far more cases go unreported. No one tracks hoarders by number, but anyone involved in animal control reports hearing of it more often.

Mistaken helpfulness

The stereotypical hoarder, he said, is an elderly woman who gathers dozens of cats, lets them breed out of control and believes she is helping them even when they begin to starve and get sick.

That was the case last year when a 77-year-old woman on Holly Springs Road outside Raleigh was ordered not to breed or own animals after authorities recovered more than 100 animals from her home, including 80 toy poodles.

"That had been going on for years," said Michael Williams, director of Wake County Animal Control. "It got away from her."

The profile is much more broad, Patronek said.

A local example: David Watts was in his 40s when 77 sheep were discovered in and around his Apex house. Convicted of cruelty to animals, Watts also was ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation.

The rise of no-kill shelters may also be adding to hoarding, said Kelli Ferris, a cruelty investigator and professor at N.C. State University's College of Veterinary Medicine.

Though most are legitimate and take only the animals they can handle, some are hoarders who use the no-kill label as cover.

This was the case with All Creatures Great and Small, a shelter in Hendersonville that was shut down by the state this month. Nearly 200 dogs and cats were moved out of the shelter, which had a Web site and a nonprofit status.

Big black well of need

Studies of animal hoarding that have been conducted show the habit often starts in childhood and is common among socially isolated people, according to the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium.

"These people are coming to this problem from a big black well of need," said Patronek, who surveyed cases from more than 50 animal control agencies. "The whole business of them just loving animals too much is a big red herring."

Another common trait, Patronek said, is the tendency to hoard other items along with the animals. This trait showed up in the poodle case.

"There were a zillion figurines in that house -- knickknacks," Ferris said. "You don't throw anything away. There were empty medication bottles from 1987."

On the farm outside Wake Forest, Miller found about 300 empty 2-liter soda bottles filled with water. The animal hoarding, she thinks, was just an outgrowth of a larger obsession.

Of the 32 cats taken so far, only two died. Sixteen have been adopted.

The surviving cats

Samba, the black cat with herpes on its eyes, is ready for adoption. It shows only a few spots of light hair, Miller said, but a distemper vaccine would have prevented its ailment.

Dena, the cat with throat polyps, is recovering nicely. When she first came to the shelter in December, the staff called her Darth Vader because of her raspy breathing.

Dilbert, a gray striped cat, had a $1,000 cornea replacement after his eyes were damaged in the cages.

Miller is working to take the animals on a delicate one-at-a-time basis, and she doesn't want to spook the owner, whom she would not identify. Eight dogs, several birds and a pot-bellied pig remain, and she hopes to rescue them this week.

There are also a few more cats, Miller said, but they will be harder to take. They live inside, just as pitifully as the first 32, but closer to the hoarder's heart.