Irresponsible homeowners are irresponsible pet owners. Are you shocked? I’m not shocked. Despite being collectively cast as unassailable victims of predatory lenders who were tricked into buying homes they couldn’t afford, word is getting out that sainted subprime borrowers are not all so sainted after all. Turns out that many of them are not only abandoning their houses upon foreclosure. They’re abandoning their pets, too:

The house was ravaged—its floors ripped, walls busted and lights smashed by owners who trashed their home before a bank foreclosed on it. Hidden in the wreckage was an abandoned member of the family: a starving pit bull.

The dog found by workers was too far gone to save—another example of how pets are becoming the newest victims of the nation’s mortgage crisis as homeowners leave animals behind when they can no longer afford their property.

Pets “are getting dumped all over,” said Traci Jennings, president of the Humane Society of Stanislaus County in northern California. “Farmers are finding dogs dumped on their grazing grounds, while house cats are showing up in wild cat colonies.”

In one such colony in Modesto, two obviously tame cats watched alone from a distance as a group of feral cats devoured a pile of dry food Jennings offered.

“These are obviously abandoned cats,” Jennings said. “They’re not afraid of people, and they stay away from the feral cats because they’re ostracized by them.”

The abandoned pets are overwhelming animal shelters and drawing fury from bloggers, especially as photos of emaciated animals circulate on the Internet.

The first people to enter an abandoned house, such as property inspectors and real estate brokers, have discovered dogs tied to trees in backyards, cats in garages, and turtles, rabbits and lizards in children’s bedrooms.

No one keeps track of the numbers of abandoned pets, but anecdotal evidence suggests that forsaken animals are becoming a problem wherever foreclosures are climbing. Stockton and Modesto have some of the nation’s highest foreclosure rates.

Despite months of warning before a foreclosure, many desperate homeowners run out the clock hoping to forestall an eviction. Then they panic, particularly if they are moving to a home where pets are not permitted.

The situation has become so widespread that the Humane Society urged home owners faced with foreclosure to take their animals to a shelter.

But it’s all someone else’s fault, of course.

Maybe Hillary will propose federal subsidies for animal shelters as part of her grand housing rescue next.

On a related note, I just filed my column on the politics of foreclosure and mentioned these very illuminating blog posts at the Los Angeles Times and Calculated Risk that report on an increasing number of homeowners simply choosing to walk away from their mortgages.

Look for more of that to happen. And more hell to break loose.

Abandoned pets are the least of the problem of a no-consequences culture.