Hello Rabbi,

What danger is there to the public from a cat that remains inside a closed home, as the questioner described? One could also say that the owner is responsible for guarding it, and therefore the obligation is on him to make sure the cat does not mate with a female cat outside. In other words, how in this specific case can one permit violating a Torah prohibition?

We are talking about public policy regarding cats in general. This is not a question about this cat or that one.

The question is whether there is a difference in policy between abandoned cats (or street cats) and a cat owned by some person. Could you please sharpen the grounds for permission in the case of a privately owned cat? What danger exists, assuming the cat indeed remains on the owner’s property, that would permit neutering for this category?
Thank you.

Obviously, if it is possible to keep him under control, there is no advantage to neutering. The question (the rationale of the verse) is: what is the reason not to neuter if you are preventing him from reproducing and having sexual relations anyway? It seems to me this is causing suffering to animals, and perhaps an even greater prohibition (because it is ongoing; compare Ran on slaughter versus feeding non-kosher meat to a sick person on the Sabbath).

I am leaving him the potential possibility of reproducing (it may be that in the future I will let him mate, or that I also have female cats, or that I will give him away in the future, etc.).
When you say suffering to animals, are you assuming that if he does not reproduce then that causes him distress? If so, could you please explain what that is based on?
In general, it seems to me that there would need to be a fairly concrete and immediate danger in order to permit violating this prohibition, for the category of privately owned cats kept under a reasonable level of supervision. I feel this is a kind of “lazy person’s” solution. Personally, I think that even for street cats this should be a last-resort solution, but in that category one could still consider it if there really are clear findings about the danger of disease, etc. (Sometimes it seems to me that this is just a misconception people have, the way a pig is perceived as a dirty/contaminated animal, but I am not knowledgeable about the data.) What do you think?

In my humble opinion, it is not proper to keep the cat Shmil shut in so that he cannot roam about, for he is named after Samuel, about whom it is said: “And he went from year to year in circuit to Bethel and Gilgal and Mizpah, and judged Israel in all those places…” 🙂

Best regards, that guy

A house cat that is not neutered and does not have a female cat usually ends up with one of two things happening: 1. he runs away, disappears, God forbid gets injured, gets run over.
2. the people he lives with go crazy from the damage he causes—scratching, urinating, yowling (and also bothering the neighbors). In the worst case they throw him out into the street; in the best case they find him another home where most likely either they themselves will neuter him or what I wrote in 1 will happen.
It is rare to find a home for every cat; people who keep female cats too and let them have kittens are uncommon. It is hard enough as it is to find homes for cats.
Whether we should refrain from raising cats and leave them to fend for themselves in the streets is another question.
But a person who has already accustomed a cat to live in a home has responsibility and needs to know that it is very hard for such a cat to manage in the wild.

With respect to Rabbi Michi, the a fortiori argument is mistaken.
There is a Torah prohibition on neutering. There is no Torah prohibition on killing an animal.
Beyond that, it is baffling and strange to permit a Torah prohibition so nonchalantly on the basis of mere reasoning (which is mistaken, as noted).

To arrive at a Torah prohibition, one must be speaking only about males, and about removing reproductive organs. Neutering females, and neutering done in another way, is apparently not forbidden by Torah law. I distinguished between neutering for human needs and neutering for some other need. As for the a fortiori argument, I still need to think about it (I will only note that according to your approach, the permission to free a slave in order to complete a prayer quorum also should not be permitted, since there is a prohibition involved. There are situations in which the use was permitted, and therefore even when the act itself is forbidden, if it is done for human use it is permitted. What about neutering done for medical treatment, for example?). I do not currently have the time to get into it.