Animal welfare advocates are fuming after learning a medium-security facility in New Brunswick has hired a pest control company to deal with an ongoing cat problem.

Nancy Morton Van Der Horst says stories about Dorchester Penitentiary began to circulate almost two years ago.

“They have done the culling in the past. They admit they have done the culling, but I mean, have they said how they have done it?” says Van Der Horst, who is with Carma, a group that traps, neuters and releases feral cats.

Walter Dash, a man who identifies himself as an inmate at the facility, recently wrote a letter to the editor about the supposed cat cull.

In his letter, Dash said inmates were told the cats would be culled, despite what he said are advantages of a neutering program.

Kelly Sherrard has four cats of her own and was horrified by Dash’s letter.

“Dorchester was a farm, a working farm. It was OK to have the cats,” says Sherrard. “It was OK to have other animals. Now that the farm is done away with, the cats are the innocent victims that are being left behind.”

Correctional Service Canada declined a request for an interview, but did issue a statement to CTV News. A spokesperson acknowledged there is a feral cat community at Dorchester and said it has to be dealt with, for health and safety reasons.

He said a pest control company has been contacted to deal with the issue, and that the contractor would be working with the SPCA.

But the SPCA says that’s news to them.

“Sometimes it takes a while for them to get a contractor and then a contractor to get out to assess the situation because currently we don’t know how many cats we are talking about,” says Karen Nelson of the Greater Moncton SPCA.

A spokesperson for the contractor, Braemar Pest Management, tells CTV News that, while they do provide pest control for the institution, nothing about the cat problem has been formalized.

Van Der Horst says her group, Carma, and many others have offered to help the facility in the past, without success.

“We can’t just walk away because the prison says they have handled it in a humane way,” she says. “We want to know how they have done it in a humane way.”

She says she hopes to have an answer sooner, rather than later.

With files from CTV Atlantic's David Bell