Rats and Cats

For several months we had a rat problem (they're actually mice but prabhu calls them rats) and tried several methods to rid them. We even trapped them in little cages and released them into the wild (the nearby lake where Prabhupada took his morning walks) thinking that we had rid of those pests forever but there were always more rats in the house, eating bhoga or trying to catch falling pieces of vegetable scraps etc while we cook. During the winter, they became very active and they were scratching up the walls, making holes in the drywall etc., we thought it was weird that the noises would get more intense at night around bedtime up until 12 midnight(it was loud fighting, shrieking and wailing in the walls like someone was putting up a chase). Sometimes we'd bang on the walls to scare them off but the past couple of weeks we noticed that the noise diminished, there have been no more late-night disturbances or screaming coming from the walls at all for the past two weeks or so. Today, I was coming home and I realised why there were no more noises from the attic and walls. I saw three cats living under the house, they came out from under my porch (its actually a deck) and were hanging around the yard.
Several months back, we noticed that someone was coming and eating the maha-prasadam from our backyard, usually we keep those things for the birds, worms and other scavengers hoping to keep raccoons and possums out of the trash bin or porch. One day, Madri saw the neighbors cats were waiting outside for her to throw out vegetable scraps and maha-prasad, sometimes even dogs would come to honor the remnants and they would all eat together without fighting each other, it was as if they had been watching Madri and knew exactly what time Madri comes to throw out the leftovers. This kept happening for several months, meanwhile the cats were getting really fat. During the winter we noticed that the scraps were piling up for two or three days at a time, so I wondered, "Where are the cats?" even though I don't usually like cats or dogs loitering around the area.
Now I realise that we made friends with the cats, we fed them maha-prasadam several months and in return the cats offered a valuable service and got rid of the rats for us. Our solution was staring us in the face the whole time, jivo jivasya jivanam. The question is, "Why the cats didn't eat the rats in the first place instead of the maha-prasadam?" maybe those cats wanted to honor the Lords maha-prasadam and offer some service to us in return.