I worked as a canvasser for awhile, and a lot of times people would invite me inside to talk. I knock on one door, and as soon as the guy opens it you’re hit with the smell of cat urine. It was so bad it would knock your socks off. He was a nice enough guy, probably 60-70 years old and he seemed lonely and like he didn’t quite have all his marbles. I’m a bleeding heart, and when he invited me in I stepped inside partly out of just morbid curiosity, and partly out of pity. He seemed really, genuinely excited to have a visitor. Guys, there was probably 20 cats in that place. There were cats everywhere, I saw cats sitting on the tables, sitting on sofas, sitting on counters etc. There cats laying on the floor, and you had to watch where you stepped to avoid getting a cat. It was a tiny little apartment, and every surface was covered in cat hair, dust, piles of cat poop, etc. If it wasn’t covered in cats or cat droppings, it was covered in trash. Old newspapers, boxes of god knows what, there were 2 Christmas trees in the living room all set up and lit even though it was in the summer. There was old food piled up all over the kitchen, and there was dishes all over the place. Some used and filthy, some even still in boxes. Just boxes and boxes of shit stacked almost to the ceiling, you could barely walk around. There was a layer of cat pee on the floor and you couldn’t take a step without your shoes sticking to the floor. He had a corner of the room filled with stacked litter boxes, probably at least 10-15 litter boxes just stacked on top of each and each of them incredibly dirty. The cats themselves were obviously sick. Some of them were missing patches of fur, a few had some sort of rash that looked like road burn. One had a huge lump on his side that stuck out, another one was missing an eye. Red eyes, fleas you could see just at a glance, it was horrible. This old man was so sweet too, and just wanted to talk about his kids, his wife (who was nowhere to be seen, no photos or anything either but he had a million photos of his kids, his cats, his neighbours, etc) and his cats. He had named each one of them, and he was describing their personalities. I felt really, really fucking bad about what I did next. As soon as I left his apartment I called the police, and I filed a report. I felt so bad for him, but I felt worse for those animals. That man wasn’t well mentally, and it was obvious. He told me he was a wish granting genie, that he ran a cat shelter, that he could see the future, etc. He genuinely seemed to believe this stuff and I couldn’t just walk away and do nothing. I never even saw the bathroom or bedroom, just the living room and kitchen. I don’t even wanna know how bad those were.