A Westmoreland County woman is facing animal cruelty charges after police said she abandoned a dozen cats in her apartment following her eviction.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the Westmoreland County District Attorney’s Office, the investigation began when Allegheny Township officers were contacted by a local animal rescue group.<\/p>\n
Authorities said that after 56-year-old Laura Zboravan was evicted from the Creekside apartments in late October, the manager reached out to the rescue group to trap the 12 cats that she had abandoned. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The manager said the apartment was left in “disarray” and was filled with cat urine and feces, according to the district attorney’s office. There was also allegedly no food or water for the cats.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The district attorney’s office said the rescue was able to capture all the cats over the course of several days. During that time, investigators said Zboravan never came back for the cats she’d left behind.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A veterinarian who examined several of the cats said their ribs and spines were pronounced, and they had little muscle mass and no palpable fat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The veterinarian said if the rescued cats continued to live in the conditions they were found in, their bodies would have continued to deteriorate, likely leading to their deaths,” the district attorney’s office said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Allegheny Township police also learned that Zboravan had kept two cats.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Zboravan is facing several charges, including aggravated cruelty to animals, animal cruelty and animal neglect. She’s expected to be in court in February, the district attorney’s office said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Westmoreland County woman is facing animal cruelty charges after police said she abandoned a dozen cats in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[694,73,75,74],"class_list":["post-82085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-animal-cruelty","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}