The Nova Scotia SPCA is appealing for help in an animal cruelty investigation after a person ice-fishing at Albro Lake on Thursday found a cat and three kittens dead inside a blue tote container along the shore.

"It does appear that somebody made a great effort to put these animals in an undisclosed location," said Jo-Anne Landsburg, SPCA chief investigator.

"And it's very disheartening for us, considering our shelter is very close to where the animals were found. They could have easily given us a call and we would have been able to take them into our shelter and give them a home."

She said necropsies have been ordered on the four animals to try to determine what happened. She said it could take weeks to get results.

She said it was difficult to assess the cats because they were frozen in quite a bit of ice.

Landsburg describes the adult, believed to be the mother, as a tuxedo cat with black and white fur.

She said one of the kittens was predominantly white, a second was predominantly black while the third kitten was a mixture of the two colours. The kittens appeared to be about eight-weeks old.

She said animal cruelty charges are possible if it can be determined who dumped the cats.

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