On Tue, 10 Jun 2003 23:10:34 -0400, Betsy wrote:

My cats are doing a marvelous job. I find at least one dead, chewed up
vole in my house (usually dropped precisely on a "pathway") daily. Yuk.
You know what's really gross? Stepping on them with bare feet.
EWWWWWWWW!


As a practical matter a cat can't or won't exterminate all of the little
critters. My cat kills a rodent a day and everyday there is a new rodent
for him to catch. He doesn't even have to range very far, he gets them all
in area that's maybe a few hundred square feet large. Rodents reproduce in
huge numbers, if they didn't they would have become extinct millions of
years ago. Domestic cats alone must kill billions of
mice/moles/chipmunks/shrews/voles a year, and none of those creatures is
on the endangered species list.