Stop reading right there.
Where does this guy live? Before we rescued our current house cat -- abandoned under the barn behind our property -- we were overrun with field mice every autumn when the first frost arrived. Our house was built to code in 1997. There is NO such thing as a mouse-proof house. Certainly no such thing as a rodent-proof barn.
In addition to which, we raise a good bit of our own food, which our cat protects: killing moles, voles, grey squirrels (rats with bushy tails), red squirrels (extremely evil red rats with bushy tales) and rabbits (rats with long ears) and seed eating birds. Hell, our cat has even treed several raccoons.
Luckily, when a very large black bear wandered into our cookout on Memorial Day last he did not go after the bear. Had he done so I would not have been able to reach my shotgun in time to save my wife...
He lives in New Zealand. My most mouse free years were when a had a few rat snakes living in my sheds. I was fine with them, though my dogs hated, but didn’t catch them. I am sympathetic to the roaming cat thing. Maybe an issue in densely populated areas. But the nation has made it this far. And I’m open to correction, but I’m not aware of extincion to our avian friends by kitties.
Same here. We live at the very edge of town. "Rural" starts at the edge of my property. Every fall we'd find mice in the house after the first frost. Then we acquired a couple of cats. In the five years since then, not a sign of a mouse. The cats earn their keep. Besides, they're very friendly.