As more information comes to light about the death of an elderly Dartmouth woman, so too do the details of her life.
Neighbours say 79-year-old Lavinia Campbell loved cats and opened her Jackson Road home to many neighbourhood strays. They say she always left a window open in her home so the stray cats could find a warm place to nap and she fed them too.
Now there is an online movement to ensure her pets find a loving home.
"She had a whole bunch of cats here, she just looked after them," says neighbour Herbert LaBaie.
"She would take them in and she'd feed them and she would be really nice to them," agrees area resident Shayna Halliday-Cornelius. "I think they're going to get really sad that she's not there to feed them."
Campbell was found murdered inside her home last Friday, after a neighbour noticed her door had been kicked in and called police.
A cat was also found in her home that night and has been placed under the care of Animal Services.
But some of the other cats Campbell cared for are still hanging around her home, which has some cat advocates concerned.
"People were posting, wondering what was going to become of the cats," says cat advocate Tracey Galusha, who belongs to a Facebook group dedicated to lost and found cats in the Halifax Regional Municipality and across Nova Scotia.
Galusha says she wants to make sure the cats are not euthanized, but found and placed in loving homes.
"We just want to see the cats taken in and taken care of," she says.
Until then, Campbell's neighbours have committed to providing the stray cats with food and water.
HRM Animal Services are also working with the property owner to trap the rest of the cats. Officials say they hope to take in roughly a dozen semi-feral cats.
"They would be assessed by a vet and also assessed by trained staff to see the condition of the animal," says Andrea MacDonald with HRM Animal Services. "If they're adoptable, they will be adopted out to a good home."
With files from CTV Atlantic's Jill Matthews
