I'm sorry about your cat. I had ZERO luck keeping outside cats here. They would disappear. I have two cats now that are indoor/outdoor, but truth be told mostly indoor. They go out to potty cause I won't have a litter box in the house and they hang around the barn but that's it.

I was told many years ago by a vet that the average outdoor kitty's life is rather short in most cases. So many reasons from diseaes to predation (dogs, raccoons, coyotes etc).

I have poisoned rats here on many occasions and never lost ANY animal to the poison. Now... my lazy cats don't eat anything that happens to wander into their useless paws to be caught but... I don't think it's "that" easy for poisoned rats to poison other things. After a massive rat poisoning herein 2000 (we were literally overrun cause of the neighbors nasty old mobile home being a perfect breeding ground as it was abandoned), we didn't lose a single anima wild or domestic to poisoned rats.

Sometimes seemingly healthy young animals die and we just don't know why.