So does having a cat reduce the incidence of rats on your property? Well, almost every home owner that I talk to say it does and that they rarely see or hear rats, until they actually do. Studies of cat-rat interaction almost always conclude that cats really don’t and won’t wipe out populations of rats in the area that they live. One suggested reason for this is that the common house cat is too well feed and doesn’t need to hunt down rats for food. In fact, one study found that using feral cats, non-domesticated felines, only removed an average of 55% of the rats in the neighbourhood with no negative long-term impact on the size of the rat population. They also found that captured rats were mostly juveniles (8 weeks to 20 weeks old) and considerably smaller in size. The cats rarely preyed on the larger, older breeding portion of the rat population. They concluded that the larger rats were too risky to prey on, larger teeth and longer claws. Also, the older rats become smarter in the presence of cats. Evidence also suggests their impact on birds and small mammals is tremendous, and far greater than it is on rats.
gogreenpestcontrol.ca & Exterminators Ladner Tsawwassen Delta B.C. Randy L. Bilesky BsF CPA
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/catrat-quandary-randy-bilesky/?published=t
https://www.delta-optimist.com/opinion/blogs/blog-cat-rat-quandary-1.23446446