Over the years, television has provided an accurate perspective of the problem — “affliction” sometimes might be the better descriptive word — of hoarding. We’re referring to people who have, in essence, ruined their lives, homes and also, perhaps, relationships because of having collected and having remained hellbent on continuing to collect virtual “mountains” of household and other items “too good” to throw away, sell or give away.

In many of the sad and otherwise troubling situations upon which television has focused, homes had become such a repository for the items in question, floors of the homes had become virtually impossible to walk across freely, and moving from room to room was challenging, to say the least.

How heart-wrenching it was sometimes to watch the cleanup process and witness the agony “planted” on the face of the owner when faced with parting with what had been collected and cherished presumably over many years.

But there is another kind of hoarding that, in the eyes of most right-thinking people, is much more serious and despicable. That hoarding involves animals — pets — kept in conditions beyond the capacity for those right-thinking people to stomach.

In many cases, referring to those conditions as cramped and squalid, causing animals to be faced with the prospect of starvation, does not begin to aptly describe the horrible prospects with which those animals are faced.

Such conditions ignore the fact that animals feel pain and the emptiness of hunger. They long for loving acceptance and offer true loyalty and comfort to those who provide for them.

Many provide confidence in terms of safety, whether or not they and their owners live in conditions acceptable generally but not affluent by any means.

They don’t deserve conditions like like those under which nearly 100 animals were forced to live in two Valley Head homes up until 2023.

A woman who was initially charged with 92 counts of animal cruelty took a plea deal earlier this year in Randolph County Magistrate Court, lowering the charges to two counts of animal cruelty and requiring her to pay nearly $28,000 in restitution.

She was at first charged with 92 counts of animal cruelty in 2023, after the Randolph County Sheriff’s Department allegedly found 11 dogs and 40 live cats in “deplorable, unlivable conditions,” as well as 41 deceased cats, at two residences owned by the woman.

Hoarding takes many forms, but law enforcement officials are correct in being strict in protecting animals from becoming suffering victims of it.