One of the most cruel things I ever saw was when my landlord evicted a female and her offspring from one of his other apartments. She left a cat locked in the apartment, no food, water, or litter box. Just left it to die. By law, the landlord wasn’t supposed to be able to enter the apartment for 30 days following the eviction, so she knew the cat would be long dead by the time anybody found it. We saw the cat sitting in a window and called the landlord. Poor thing had been in there with no food or water for almost a week by the time they got it out.
“She left a cat locked in the apartment, no food, water, or litter box. Just left it to die.”
People who do one “wrong” thing seldom leave it at that. There is something wrong with everything they touch. That woman was a classic sociopath. (At the very least.) I knew a guy who cleans student housing. He reported finding abandoned pets also; just left there.
Some of my friends call me paranoid because I don’t easily trust people. I have seen and read about too much of this sort of thing. The people who do things like this are often personable and seemingly friendly.
My mother used to say, “You watch how people treat others because one day they’ll treat you the same way.” Not only is that true, but it includes how they treat pets.