The stench wafting from the two-storey home was like urine, but also seemed to carry the foul hint of death. With her eyes burning from the stink, Toronto police Const. Yvette Chiasson stood on the front porch as a cat pawed at the screen door from inside.

“His one eye was an inch lower than it should be,” she said, testifying Tuesday at an animal cruelty trial stemming from what she saw that day in April 2011. Chiasson said the cat, skinny and covered in oozing sores, was trying to claw its way outside, to get to the fresh air.

“It looked like (the eye) was rotting right out of his head … It was beyond sad. It was heartbreaking.”

Chiasson was the first cop called to the house at 144 Manor Rd. E., southeast of Yonge and Eglinton, that Sunday afternoon. Within the next few hours, firefighters in protective suits had scoured the home for a possible human body, discovering instead several mangy-looking cats with feces and urine soaking the floors and splattered all over the house, according to testimony heard in court Tuesday.

The Crown alleges there were “about 107 cats” on the premises, describing it as “unsanitary to the extreme.”

The homeowner, Diane Way, 66, is charged with animal cruelty and causing unnecessary suffering to animals. The lawyer and former George Brown College professor, a diminutive woman with a neat bob of grey hair, pleaded not guilty on the opening day of her trial at a College Park courtroom on Friday. The Crown called five witnesses.

Way’s next-door neighbour, Charles Baker, testified Tuesday that he had been bothered by the stench “of old urine, basically” that came from Way’s house for about two years. He would sometimes see cats in the window, and said the state of Way’s yard and the ever-present stink from her home had become a neighbourhood issue that had been taken up with the local councillor.

“It was becoming more and more unsightly,” Baker said of the house. “But the greater concern was this odour. That was just pervading everywhere.”

Dorette Pollard, a lawyer from Ottawa, also testified. She told the court she was canvassing for election to a legal administrative body when she approached Way’s home on April 24, 2011. That’s when the smell rocked her, she said.

“My mouth started foaming. I didn’t vomit, but I felt ill,” she told the court. “Because of the scent I thought maybe someone had died inside.”

Pollard then called 911 to report her concern, she said.

A three-member crew of firefighters arrived on the scene, equipped to search the house in protective suits while testing the air quality, acting district fire chief Donald Lester told the court. He testified that when he entered the house through the back door, he and his two partners noticed feces covering the floors. He added that the floor was soaked with what he believes was urine, to the point where he would break through the rotting, weakened floorboards.

“There was a lot of cat feces all over,” said Lester. “Everywhere. On the counter, on the table, on the floor. Everywhere.”

Lester said he then went to the basement, where he saw what he estimates were 20 cats poking their heads out of the rafters. He said the cats were mostly black and had oozing and crusty sores.

“One cat, we thought it looked like it didn’t have eyes, that they were taken out or they were missing,” he said.

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Defence lawyer Walter Fox suggested Lester may have overlooked some details, such as food and water bowls for the felines that were in the house. Fox also said that the wetness on the floor may have simply been a result of Way’s house being particularly damp. Lester disagreed.

Way’s trial continues Wednesday.