| Re: Rats in garden and noises in loft
I read recently innew scientist that rats are naturally repelled by the smell of cats urine. They automatically move away on encountering the smell - unless they are infected with a parasite that requires a cat to complete its life cycle in which case the rat loses the instinct to move increasing its chances of being eaten due to this loss of fear...
Only partially relevant here I know but interesting none-the-less - maybe the scattered cat nip encourages cats to wee a bit perhaps territorially (because obviously cats love it) and this in trun deters the rats....
so cats don't necessarily remove rats by killing them, they just deter them from the immediate area. |