re: How many out door cats is kosher for a normal neighborhood house?

We are surrounded by hay fields. My attempts at flower and vegetable gardening have given the voles, moles and mice softer ground to move through. Rabbits are not kept in limits by a red hawk release done two decades ago.

We got to a situation where the cats got too old to hunt aggressively, the rodent population grew, the snake population expanded out of the woods into the gardens. (There is nothing quite like being on your knees, weeding and looking and seeing a blacksnake head coming out of the ground two feet away.)

We now have two young cats who hunt for their dinner and we supplement it (when they are hungry) with cat food.


Out west how are TPTB recommend control of rodents that are potential carriers of Hanta Virus?