Sometimes (not really as it is quite often)  I am so glad that Spanish is my mother tongue. This means that I am able to read Latin American and Spanish writers. Many of them have off-the-wall humour as does Uruguayan, Eduardo Galeano (September 1940 – 13 April 2015). This little essay was published in 1960. But it would seem that part of Galeano's little story is partially true, Below this is a citation from Wikipedia in both English and in Spanish.

In the great island of Borneo, cats ate the lizards, that ate the cockroaches, and the cockroaches ate the wasps that ate the mosquitoes.

En la gran isla de Borneo, los gatos comían a las lagartijas, que comían a las cucarachas, y las cucarachas comían a las avispas, que comían a los mosquitos.

DDT was not in the menu.

El DDT no figuraba en el menú.

In the mid twentieth century, the World Health Association bombarded the island with massive discharges of DDT, to fight malaria which did in all the mosquitos and everything else.

A mediados del siglo veinte, la Organización Mundial de la Salud bombardeó la isla con descargas masivas de DDT, para combatir la malaria, y aniquiló los mosquitos y todo lo demás.

When the rats found out that the cats had also died poisoned, they invaded the island,they devoured the output of farmer’s fields and then propagated typhus and other calamities.

Cuando las ratas se enteraron de que también los gatos habían muerto envenenados, invadieron la isla, devoraron los frutos de los campos y propagaron el tifus y otras calamidades.

With the unforeseen attack by the rats the WHO experts had a crisis meeting and resolved to send cats in parachutes.

Ante el imprevisto ataque de las ratas, los expertos de la Organización Mundial de la Salud reunieron su comité de crisis y resolvieron enviar gatos en paracaídas.

In these days of July 1960 dozens of felines crossed the Borneo skies. 

En estos días de julio de 1960, decenas de felinos atravesaron el cielo de Borneo.

The cats landed softly, applauded by the human inhabitants which had survived the international help.

Los gatos aterrizaron suavemente, ovacionados por los humanos que habían sobrevivido a la ayuda internacional.

Story in English - My translation.

 From Wikipedia all about that Cat Drop (16 March 1960)

 Operation Cat Drop is the name given to the delivery, by the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force, of cats to a remote village in Sarawak, Borneo. The cats were delivered in crates, dropped by parachute, as part of a broader program of supplying cats to combat a plague of rats. Many accounts of the event are of uncertain veracity, however. It is sometimes claimed that the cat population had previously been reduced as an unintended consequence of spraying DDT for malaria control. This story, often with various elaborations, is often told as an illustration of the problems that may arise from well-intended interventions in the environment, or of unintended consequences more generally.

It is not clear whether Operation Cat Drop was linked to the use of insecticides for malaria control or whether cats had died in significant numbers because of the concentration of the insecticides in the food chain. Various aspects of the story have been called into question. For example, it was probably dieldrin rather than DDT which was used for malaria control in the region and then caused numerous cat deaths.

Contemporaneous accounts merely say that cats were required to address rat problems, and these cats were flown out of Singapore by the Royal Air Force and were parachuted in. The operation was reported as a "success" at the time. These newspaper reports, published soon after the Operation, mention 23 cats being used, much less than the 14,000 mentioned in some later accounts. Contemporaneous reports also describe a "recruitment" drive for 30 cats a few days prior to the Operation proper.

 Operación Caida del Gato (16 de marzo de 1960)

La «Operación Caída del Gato» (Operation Cat Drop en inglés) es el nombre dado a un relato, de veracidad incierta, sobre el reparto, por el Royal Air Force del Reino Unido, de 14.000 gatos a una remota villa de Sarawak, en Borneo. Los gatos fueron repartidos en cajas y lanzados en paracaídas, como parte de un programa de suministrar gatos de combate contra una plaga de ratas. La antigua población de gatos había sido previamente reducida como una consecuencia no intencional de dispersión de DDT para el control de la malaria. La historia, a menudo con diversas elaboraciones dice a veces como una ilustración de los problemas que pueden aparecer de intervenciones bien intencionadas en el medio ambiente, o de consecuencias no intencionadas en general.

No es claro de cualquier modo los eventos de la Operación Caída del Gato si la historia realmente ocurrió como comúnmente es contada o si los gatos fueron alguna vez repartidos en paracaídas. Mientras los gatos son de hecho inusualmente susceptible a los efectos tóxicos del DDT, y la mortandad de gatos no era un insólito efecto secundario de las operaciones de control de la malaria, muchos aspectos de la historia han sido puestos en duda. Por ejemplo, fue probablemente dieldrín antes que DDT lo que fue usado para el control de la malaria en la región y causó numerosas muertes de gatos