Is it negative karma to let my cat go outside?

person

I like to let my cat go out, she's much happier when she can but she'll inevitably find a bird or rabbit to kill. Its considered negative karma for a leader to order soldiers to kill. I'm not telling her what to do, in fact I tell her not to, she doesn't seem to understand though :-/ So by letting her out, knowing that if she can she'll kill something, am I getting any negative karma?

Mountains

No, she's doing what cats do. It's her instinct.

seeker242

I have a neighbor who would let their cat outside. The cat got hit by a car and is dead now. My cats never go outside for this reason and the fact that they kill things. The birds are much happier when my cats stay inside. They love to sit by the window and watch the birds though, but I'm not about to let them go and kill the birds, because that is what they do.

zidangus

I don't think it is negative karma. Therefore, unless you can think of a way to train the cat to do otherwise, I think all you can do is hope it doesn't kill anymore animals, but cats do this so it would be no surprise if it did. Anyway keeping the cat indoors, is not the answer either in my opinion. Just let nature be is my advice.


With Metta

zenff

So by letting her out, knowing that if she can she'll kill something, am I getting any negative karma?

Yes. In your next life you will be a mouse and be eaten by a cat. lol
At the other hand; look what is in the cat food.
You could end up in your next life as some unspecified type of animal protein.

jenzay

So weird, I was just sitting outside and saw my cat catch a bird right in front of me. I found my cat in the jungle in Thailand so she's very wild. So I was also thinking about this. I hate to see her kill birds but I also think it's unfair to keep her inside. At least she eats them...

federica

I would put a big bell on the cat.
It's hard to creep up on something quietly when every time you move, a bell rings....
My parents used to have a cat, who regularly brought dead and injured animals it had caught, into the house.
Once we put a nice bell on her collar, it stopped happening....

person

I would put a big bell on the cat.
It's hard to creep up on something quietly when every time you move, a bell rings....
My parents used to have a cat, who regularly brought dead and injured animals it had caught, into the house.
Once we put a nice bell on her collar, it stopped happening....

I must have a really sneaky cat, I tried that but she still catches them

:-/

Jeffrey

Cat always takes bell off. Cat too smart.

vinlyn

I can't help but think back to a discussion I had in Thailand with a monk. It wasn't about this topic, but I wonder if it doesn't apply. It was about how to learn about and practice Buddhism when you live in a non-Buddhist country. His answer was, "Easy to learn about Buddhism; buy a book. Difficult to learn about yourself."

The parallel here may be, that you can't control the whole kingdom of animals, including your own pets, whose natural environment is outdoors. Difficult enough to control yourself (in a Buddhistic sort of way).

federica

I would put a big bell on the cat.
It's hard to creep up on something quietly when every time you move, a bell rings....
My parents used to have a cat, who regularly brought dead and injured animals it had caught, into the house.
Once we put a nice bell on her collar, it stopped happening....

I must have a really sneaky cat, I tried that but she still catches them

:-/

You must have bought one of those little sissy bells you get in pet shops.
They're completely ineffective.
You need a little jingle-bell the size of a marble, (or even slightly bigger) with a really loud clanger.
One like this, for example.

http://www.fredaldous.co.uk/product_251530044.htm

You could even put two on the collar.

zenff

Or you could just kill the cat.
(sorry I'm in a mood)

federica

Rita Rudner.

"I hate cats.....

(pause)

....They're a dreadful waste of good fur".

I personally despise the fact that they kill indiscriminately.
A domestic cat, in a loving home is never hungry.
And never without toys to play with.
yet they go and kill or injure for some unknown reason we call instinct, and play and toy with the victim.
A completely hypothetical and entirely speculative comment, but I would bet that IF hitler ever WAS reborn in the animal realm - he'd be a cat....

One of the greatest causes of song-bird population decline - is the domestic cat.

Feral cats, scavenge in bins, and find food in the easiest way possible - by raiding dustbins.
The domestic cat needs reining in.

zidangus

Or you could just kill the cat.
(sorry I'm in a mood)

mood or not, thats just not nice is it ?

:bawl:

zenff

I'm allergic to cats.
Some people say that's because I subconsciously hate them.
We will never know that for sure, will we.

zidangus

Guess not

Thao

i let my cat go in and out as she pleases.

song birds are killed by chemicals that man sprays in the air and by hawks, etc. man is the greatest killer of nature, not the cat, who eats them by the way, that is, if he/she is smart. and eating raw protein is much better for a cat than cat food. same with a dog. you can read price-pottenger study. http://www.ppnf.org/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=228

no one likes to see a cat kill an animal, but that is the way of nature.

federica

While it is not the primary cause, it is still very high. It is estimated that 39 million songbirds are killed by cats every year.

http://www.fws.gov/birds/mortality-fact-sheet.pdf

http://www.helium.com/debates/339619-are-cats-responsible-for-destroying-migratory-songbird-populations-in-the-usa/side_by_side

http://www.songbirdhospital.org/Help_Songbirds.html

That's preventable by keeping the cat indoors as much as possible, particularly in the nesting period - and putting a bell on the cat.

@Thao - regardless of which food is better for the cat (and you are taking the subject off topic here) I actually don't think the cat gives a flying fiddler's elbow whether raw food is better than commercially-available food.
That isn't a mitigating factor.
Dogs are also generally fed commercial dry and wet food - you'll find they don't go out and hunt and kill prey indiscriminately.
And the majority of cats do not eat what they catch. And if they do, then often, only partially...

vinlyn

While it is not the primary cause, it is still very high. It is estimated that 39 million songbirds are killed by cats every year.

Wow, that's a staggering number! I had no idea.

So, you cat people, stay away from my parrot!

zidangus

While it is not the primary cause, it is still very high. It is estimated that 39 million songbirds are killed by cats every year.

Wow, that's a staggering number! I had no idea.

So, you cat people, stay away from my parrot!

The RSPB have an article on cats and bird decline.
They are saying

"the UK's cats catch up to 275 million prey items a year, of which 55 million are birds. This is the number of prey items that were known to have been caught; we don't know how many more the cats caught, but didn't bring home, or how many escaped but subsequently died."

so it could be even larger !
http://www.rspb.org.uk/advice/gardening/unwantedvisitors/cats/birddeclines.aspx

Although the number is large the RSPB also says

"Despite the large numbers of birds killed, there is no scientific evidence that predation by cats in gardens is having any impact on bird populations UK-wide. This may be surprising, but many millions of birds die naturally every year, mainly through starvation, disease, or other forms of predation. There is evidence that cats tend to take weak or sickly birds."

With Metta

Thao

and if we didn't have cats killing mice outdoors we would more than likely have the black plague again, according to my college professor. i have had birds drop dead out of the trees for no reason that i know of. man poisons millions of birds a year to keep them from destroying crops. and if their poisoning of birds don't get them the pesticides they use do. and the cats won't touch one of those dead birds that just dropped dead.

sorry, but most animals prefer raw food. the day i handed my dog a raw chicken leg she jumped at it. whereas she doesn't care for any commercial dog food like she does the raw chicken and liver. and commercial food is hazardous to the animals health.

if you don't like cats, then you don't like cats, but this so-called study that you presented is biased. show me a hawk or an eagle, and i will show you a great bird hunter. ever see them chasing a bird in the sky and catching it? a cat has a harder time. I have watched both, and most often the birds get away from a cat, but not a hawk. A cat does eat all of the bird, eventually, unless it is just a house cat playing around and so not hungry. Feral cats eat the bird. Nature is nature. Maybe we should just keep the farmers inside so they won't poison the birds that they deny poisoning for fear of human outcry.

But if I am still getting off track, I would again say that a cat is happiest when it can go outside and chase mice and birds. That is their nature. Sitting in a window looking outside is no more joyful for a cat than it is a housebound person.

NOTaGangsta

I don't think it's a problem unless your keeping Bodhisattva precepts. It will be bad karma for the cat thats for sure.

Cinorjer

I'd worry more about your cat getting hit by a car, getting injured or killed by dogs and other cats, catching a disease from where feral cats have pooped and urinated around the neighborhood, and while we're at it, having your cat use some neighbor's flowerbed as a litter box. I have a neighbor several houses down that insists on letting their male cat wander the neighborhood, and our porch always smells like cat urine every summer because we had an indoor female cat.

Animal control people will tell you this habit of people letting their cats wander loose is a huge mistake and problem for them. If you want to let your cat have some fresh air, you can hook a leash onto their collar like people do with dogs all the time.

As for birds and mice, one of the posters above did mention that cats tend to catch the sick and weak, and their predation is only a tiny part of huge mortality that these fast reproducing species on the bottom of the food chain are designed for by evolution.

compassionate_warrior

Nature is very non-Buddhistic, you know. Animals have to kill in order to survive. But as Cinorjer pointed out, the killing has a compassionate aspect; if you look at the prey species as a whole, the killing done by the predator weeds out the weak members, and thus strengthens the species and its survivability. The key question is: are we responsible for our pets' actions, or should we feel responsible for our pets doing what comes naturally to them? Would it be more inhumane to keep them cooped up indoors? Should someone who's worried about this even have a cat? I don't have answers, only questions.

Jeffrey

Once your cat goes out its too late. They will throw a huge fit if you don't let them out.

seeker242

While it is not the primary cause, it is still very high. It is estimated that 39 million songbirds are killed by cats every year.

http://www.fws.gov/birds/mortality-fact-sheet.pdf

http://www.helium.com/debates/339619-are-cats-responsible-for-destroying-migratory-songbird-populations-in-the-usa/side_by_side

http://www.songbirdhospital.org/Help_Songbirds.html

That's preventable by keeping the cat indoors as much as possible, particularly in the nesting period - and putting a bell on the cat.

@Thao - regardless of which food is better for the cat (and you are taking the subject off topic here) I actually don't think the cat gives a flying fiddler's elbow whether raw food is better than commercially-available food.
That isn't a mitigating factor.
Dogs are also generally fed commercial dry and wet food - you'll find they don't go out and hunt and kill prey indiscriminately.
And the majority of cats do not eat what they catch. And if they do, then often, only partially...

I used to work at a wildlife rescue center. 95% of the injured birds we got there were "CBC" (Caught by Cat), around 40% of them died on average. There were many unhappy birds! Mostly songbirds and usually the younger ones. It seems inappropriate to consider a cats happiness to be more important than a birds happiness. No cat is going to suffer because it can't go outside. The same could not be said about birds.

zidangus

I don't think it's a problem unless your keeping Bodhisattva precepts. It will be bad karma for the cat thats for sure.

Not all Buddhists believe this.
Some Buddhists believe that animals cannot engage in conscious acts of self-improvement hence, they cannot improve the status of their karma, and their souls have to continue to be reborn as an animal until the bad karma is exhausted.

In terms of not being able to engage in conscious acts of self improvement I tend to think that this is the case for some animals, while others I am not so sure.
Anyway just giving the view that some Buddhists have.


With Metta

LibreEspiritu

Maybe the bird has bad karma ---- and in the next life, the cat will be the bird, and the bird will be the cat. (The endless cycle of Karma)

Gui

meow

compassionate_warrior

Consult an Oracle. Or your local sangha teacher.