deplorable conditions at a pennsylvania shelter
Posted on Sunday, March 16, 2008
From the Philadelphia Inquirer...
SPCA tries saving Pa. shelter's cats
By Amy Worden
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
From New York to Indiana to Georgia, desperate animal-rescue groups regularly turned to the Tiger Ranch Cat Sanctuary near Pittsburgh and its promise of lifetime care for unwanted cats that likely would have been euthanized in overcrowded shelters.
In the last year, thousands of cats, some feral, many others once family pets, have been shipped hundreds of miles to what their rescuers thought was a safe haven.
But the reality, revealed in a nighttime raid led by the Philadelphia-based Pennsylvania SPCA last week, was anything but safe.
A 120-member team of shelter workers, police, veterinarians and volunteers descended on the property, 20 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, on Thursday night after a seven-month undercover investigation and found hundreds of sick and dying cats, 105 cat carcasses in freezers, and a fresh burial pit.
"What struck me was how young the cats were," Howard Nelson, chief executive officer of the Pennsylvania SPCA said yesterday after witnessing several autopsies. "They did not die natural deaths. They were coming in healthy, were exposed to horrific viruses, and died a horrific death."
Conditions were deplorable in a house and five outbuildings, crammed with scores of cats huddled around a portable heater with no clean water and a single food bowl, humane officials said.
Over the next 48 hours, about 400 cats, almost all suffering from life-threatening disease, were seized in what SPCA officials said might have been the state's largest anti-cruelty raid ever. Agents yesterday were trying to round up 250 to 300 cats still roaming the 29-acre property.
The sanctuary's owner, Linda Bruno, 46, also known as Lin Marie, was arrested and charged with 14 counts of animal cruelty. She was held in an Allegheny County jail after being unable to post the $50,000 bond. More cruelty charges are pending, authorities said.
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