Neighbors prefer rats to cats!

I just wanted to let you know that there is an ordinance in Detroit that states that you cannot allow your cats to stray outside your house otherwise face having them picked up by the SPCA and eventually destroyed. It is so hard to keep cats trapped in your house as they need to roam outside and are nothing like Dogs who are quite happy staying in a yard or home. After a couple of years living in the Detroit area I decide to save a couple of cats from the horrendous winter weather and built them a house equipped with heat and put it on our back porch. This served them well for a couple of years. The cats wanted to go outside at night in the summer, so we really had no chance but let them. Everything went well for some time because they would appear at the door in the morning and sleep all day on the back porch. Just recently things changed drastically for our cats though. It seems that someone in our neighborhood has complained about them and traps were set to catch them. They disappeared one at a time until we have only one left. I can't really understand these people because if you have no cats outside then you open the possibility of having rats and mice running freely. I saw a large rat just yesterday run around a house not far from here, had my cats been outside they would have gotten it. I guess people prefer rats to cats, something that I just can't understand!