Ignore the miserable gits. I can't imagine what they're doing in The Litter Tray.
Don't delete the thread.
I have around 20 or so permanent cats and usually around 5 to 10 temporary (hopefully) ones. The permanent ones have, more or less, free run of the house. And I'm in a normal terrace house in London. Nothing at all rural about where I live.
Firstly my neighbours are fine with it. My cats don't normally seem to go far from my garden. And no, I don't see many birds, but then I didn't see many before I got cats either. I have never seen any be killed, nor have I been presented with any dead bodies. And in all the time (20 years or so) that I've had a lot of cats, there have probably only been a dozen or so mouse deaths that I'm aware of.
Part of my garden 'encourages' shitting (soft earth with bark chippings) so cats are likely to use my garden as opposed to surrounding ones (which tend to be paved). I also have indoor litter trays and a covered outdoor one.
Things I've done to make things easier
I've had a cat toilet extension built which acts as a cat porch - so the flap to the outside is there and there is another flap they then need to go through to come in, so hopefully wiping their feet on mats on the way in. That is also where I keep the food and (huge) litter trays. I don't have flushable litter, so my bin is always full of largely nothing but cat litter. I also have access to a few 'spare' bins on the street as an overflow.
I have also had a 'neuter/return' shed built in my garden which houses some temporary residents.
I have just had a microchip cat flap fitted on the kitchen door to restrict access to the rest of the house. So any rogue pissers/sprayers are confined to the kitchen and cat porch and garden. And I have another microchip flap on the living room door to further restrict access to those that can behave.
I have hard floors everywhere. A lot of Amtico, which is also pissproof, and tiles, with sealant around all skirting boards. Before I found a way to contain the sprayers I had a problem with rusting radiators, so all radiators have been changed to stainless steel. My stairs are sanded.
All furniture is free of any sort of upholstery - so entirely wooden dining chairs for example and I have a couple of resin armchairs (not dreadfully comfortable but indestructible). And for the sofa I have a day bed with a metal frame. So that just has a mattress to sit on and cushions (which are pvc), so I just need to change the sheet on the mattress frequently.
I think that about covers it. There is a hell of a lot of cleaning involved, but it's all less work than having one child I'm sure, and probably less than having one dog.
The cats themselves seem happy and many friendships have formed and they accept newcomers without turning a hair as they are so used to living in a big group (which is the situation most have come from anyway - from colonies in gardens).