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Is it negative karma to let my cat go outside?
person
Don't believe everything you thinkThe liminal space Veteran
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?
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Comments
With Metta
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.
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....
:-/
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).
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.
(sorry I'm in a mood)
"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.
:bawl:
Some people say that's because I subconsciously hate them.
We will never know that for sure, will we.
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.
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...
So, you cat people, stay away from my parrot!
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
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.
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.
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