Fish and Wildlife officials want to know who’s responsible for leaving threatening messages and poison in an effort to kill cats on state property.

A woman trying to help the cats found the poison Friday night, days after someone left a a warning letter demanding she stop her rescue efforts. It happened along the banks of the American River next to the Nimbus Fish Hatchery.

A big problem along the American River comes from people abandoning their cats. That’s led to a large feral population which the Department of Fish and Wildlife is trying to control humanely.

Michelle Lee admits she’s a cat lover, so when she saw large numbers of feral cats along the American River, she wanted to do something to help them. She contacted Animal Control and the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and they agreed to work with her.

“Animal Control will use live capture traps, and what that allows us to do is it takes the animals out of here safely, spay or neuter them, and we often release them because after a certain period of time, they’re not adoptable,” Department of Fish and Wildlife Scientific Aide Jason Fareira said.

Lee set traps not just for the adult cats, but also kittens she believed could still be adoptable.

“What she’s doing is definitely helping the population stay at as low a number possible is what we’re after,” Fareira said.

But on Tuesday, when Lee came back to the river, she found all her traps gone, replaced with a sign that read, “All feral cats will be trapped, shot or poisoned. You like em, take em to your house. They have no place here.”

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