I was a little rushed there. ‘After 19 days’ is dumb wording, with the assumption of 5000 cats skinned per day, the cats would be gone sometime on the 20th day. There would be plenty of rats left, and some might have given birth on the 20th day, but 4 newborn ratlets would not feed a cat, even if there were any left. If any cats were pregnant, any kittens born in that period would not feed 4 full grown rats.
But rats will feed on other things besides skinless cats. The cat and rat excrement would serve to feed insects and their offspring, and the rats could consume any plant life in the area, along with any food discarded or left unsecured by the catskinners. This would be like any self sustaining agriculture, such as growing corn to feed to cattle. It’s just a matter of resource management.
I would suggest that the market for cat/rat skins has been limiting this type of farming. Perhaps calling the pelts ‘chatte’ would increase the market. But regulations might limit that to female cats. It would be more practical to skin more toms than mollys. If mole skin can be sold, there could be a market for rat skin as well.
Rat milk was suggested, but that might decrease the reproduction rate of the rats, and require the additional costs of pasteurization and cold storage. A better source of additional revenue would be connecting 1,000,000 exercise wheels to a generator and producing electricity.
More information about the job requirements and work rate of cat skinners, along with info about the average age of cats ready to skin, etc,. would allow a better cost/benefit analysis.
This is part of the problem. I doubt that even the healthiest female cat could produce 12 kittens that survive to adulthood each year. IME, usually there’s one or two kittens that just don’t make it from birth to weaning during each year (not during each litter). Also, while toms are definitely NECESSARY for kitten production, they’re only good for half kittens…that is, even if a queen DOES manage to produce a dozen kittens a year, you’re going to have to consider that she produced 12 half kittens, and the tom(s) produced the other half kittens. You can help up the average by having only 1 tom to every 4 or 6 queens, and using the excess toms for your rat food, but those toms are still going to drag the average number of kittens per cat down.
Plus, of course, a lot of the protein from both rat and cat meat is going to be excreted as waste, as others pointed out.
They may be slow but come on, they’re working for free…
Actually, to make the original sums add up, perhaps they’re paying to work there? In which case the whole thing could be made more profitable by hiring more workers.