PITTSBURGH — An animal-welfare agency can keep kittens taken from a home where they were kept in squalid conditions, even though an animal control officer admits she was outside her jurisdiction, a county judge ruled.

The officer, Tammy Kerr, said she resigned from the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals earlier this month, before Venango County Judge Oliver Lobaugh ruled the agency could keep the cats.

Kerr testified at a hearing on the issue last month and said the PSPCA routinely sends its officers into counties where they aren't sworn in to uphold the state's animal cruelty law.

Kerr and Robert Martin, the attorney for the Oil City couple who owned the six kittens, had hoped the judge would rule on the jurisdiction question.