Cats are formidable natural predators thanks to their extraordinary agility or their overpowering sense of smell. Thus, birds, mice and rabbits do not escape when a cat chases them. But when it comes to rats, cats are ineffective. So why are cats powerless against rats?
Why Cats Are Powerless Against Rats: The Different Causes
Cats cannot hunt rats like they do other rodents. The reasons are various and you will see that they are totally logical. Here’s why cats are ineffective at getting rid of rats.
Rats are too big
Rats are very big and cats know they are taking a risk in attacking them, they will only attack them in the event of an unavoidable confrontation. This is also what allowed the Middle Ages to limit diseases linked to rats, until cats were linked to devils among Christians, which led to health disasters.
But it is not only out of fear that they do not attack them, they will need a lot of energy to overcome them and they will quickly prefer mice and birds which will require much less energy from them.
Because anyway, they will never eat the whole rat, and will not come back to the corpse in the next few days, for hygiene and because the corpse will attract other predators. To hunt birds and other mice is much more preferable.
It is also for this reason that they are a disaster for biodiversity and that many species suffer from contact with them, in the places where they live.
Rats are very smart
Rats are very intelligent animals, if they see cats, the one who serves as a scout for the group will warn the others and they will hide. Because in the event of a confrontation, they know that they risk their lives, especially if they approach the territory of the cat.
Moreover, for a rat, a cat can hide others and they will tend to overestimate the risk of predation. For this reason, they will carefully stay away from any risk.
Question of hygiene
Cats are very clean and hate dirt, unlike rats who go into extremely dirty places. So if your cat sees a rat, or rather smells one, he may not want to run after it, even if it’s a small rat within his reach.
A non-learning
Wild cats will often hunt cats more often, already because they can eat it together, but above all because their mother taught them to hunt and they reproduce what their mother taught them, which is not not the case of animals adopted from a cat flap.
They can then overestimate the danger of a rat if they see one for the first time without their mother having ever hunted one, so it will naturally move towards easier and more abundant prey to feed on animal meat.
They taste less good
Rats eat a lot of things and usually the ones in towns eat garbage , so if you have a cat that finds it outside and attacks it and then eats it, it will find it less good than the birds. and mice that eat much healthier things. He will end up finding nothing but disadvantages in chasing rats.
It’s a good thing anyway because rats can have ingested rat poison which will then contaminate your cat and birds and mice or even rabbits will be without risk for him.
Why Cats Are Powerless Against Rats: The Final Word
Cats are powerless against rats for reasons that have more to do with sanity than fear and will only attack when conflict is unavoidable. So if you were counting on your cat to get rid of a rat, unfortunately, he can’t do anything about it, except scare him away. But if the rat understands that the cat is alone, he can infest your house, bringing all his troops back.