All I have seen is rabbits and birds. I don't live in the ghetto.
I live as far from the ghetto as one can get. Rats live everywhere. City and country.
If you have flowing water you have rats who swim upstream. If you have chickens you have rats.
I put out pail traps to catch mice and catch the occasional rat.
But for people that live in or near the woods, like we do many critters on are on our lawn. We’ve never seen a rat, but the mice, ground squirrels, skunks, raccoons, snakes, hordes of insects, deer, coyotes etc. Keeping the grass mowed removes the natural cover they hide in and thus keeps them farther away from home.
We cannot keep an outside cat. Within a month they will be a meal for some bird of prey or coyotes.