HOARDING ::: I subscribe to the Animal Planet Channel on cable. I did it originally for Laddie. He loved watching television as all Westies are famous for doing. He could sit for hours watching TV. I thought it was funny. ::: I also get TLC - The Learning Channel. I like learning new things. Never mind that I was wrong about that channel. But it's part of the package and we have damned little to subscribe to in this very French province where there are way more French channels here than there are English Canadian channels. ::: I'm setting you up. I digress. ::: It's about "hoarding". People who hoard animals. Personally I think they are deranged in their misguided belief that they are doing 'good', but that's just me. ::: Well, my mother was a "hoarder". Uh huh. No cure either. What did she hoard? CHILDREN. Yes, children. There was Elizabeth, Paul, Peter, Louise, then when Peter was killed at age 8 years - my mother's favourite - I think she just didn't "lose it", she totally went to pieces. So she took in Vincent from a large family of children in New Brunswick when that family split up, and Richard from a northern Province in China who at age 9 had the worst bad habit of smoking like a chimney and would smoke cigarette butts off the street. Blaggghhh! Then there was Wolfgang and his brother Peter from Germany. My Dad adopted both Vincent and Richard as they had no mothers. I loved Wolfgang and his brother Peter who had great parents, they just needed a 'temporary place' to live while looking for work and a place of their own. Then there was Vera and her kids, Claire and Peter. Yes, yes, I know what you are thinking: PETER? How many 'Peters' were there? I don't know, never crossed my mind until just now. Too many. ::: We would often be as many as twelve sitting at our dining room table on any Sunday when everybody was at home, together. In one room. ::: Well, for some odd reason, I've never understood, I always ended up still being the "baby of the family" no matter how many kids my mother hoarded. ::: One day, the straw broke my back when in came a family from Guadaloupe. Mother and three kid kids. OYE! ::: I lost it. ::: One afternoon coming in after school, there was Maria and her three kids. Other than Louise nobody else was at home. Well, I went to pieces. I screamed at Maria: "Get OUT of MY house! Immediately!" Oh my God. That is exactly what Maria did. She packed, grabbed her three kids and left the house. I went to our room and waited. Terrified! Beyond my wits! What would my mother do when she got home and no Maria? Ooooh. I knew I was in trouble. Louise just stood there in the middle of our bedroom looking scared, not saying a word. ::: Well, there were no more kids after that. That was the end of the road to this hoarding business. I had had it of constantly seeing total strangers come into our house, eat at our dining room table, sleep in our bedrooms - the list was endless of my infantile list of grievances. I was about eight years old. All I wanted was my mother and father to be my mother and father - full time. None of this "sharing" stuff. ::: After that, I don't remember what happened that day, that week that month, that year.