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I think a more appropriate analogy is getting annoyed at a dog for barking when a stranger walks up to the house; it’s what dogs do.
Eliminating in the proper place and meeting pack standards of behavior is natural behavior for dogs and cats - that’s why it is so easy to train them.
My dullard goes out on the deck on occasion. He must be getting old because now he just snoozes under a deck chair, with birds and squirrels hopping all around him. You never know, though. He CAN move like greased lightning when he wants. He’s more interested in moles and mice, he’ll sit staring at a clump of grass for an hour at a time and occasionally pounce at something. No bodies have been brought for my approval…
When I lived at home years ago, we had a young spayed female cat and an ancient half blind tomcat. She was a real hunter, once caught and killed a full sized rabbit. I came out that morning and saw my old tom casually munching away on the remains, while she sat, blinking at me, purring, like an Egyptian cat statue. “Look mom, I fed Old Tom for you this morning”.
“To be enraged with a dumb brute that acted out of blind instinct is blasphemous. …”
—first mate starbuck from “moby dick”
Indeed! To paraphrase a quote from Sideshow Bob on The Simpsons: “Attempted avicide - now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel Prize for Attempted Physics?”
Would my slogan/quote, “We domesticated them, which makes us responsible”, fit this situation?
Just a thought.
Q
Training your animal does not consist of chasing it around the house or tossing it into the shower. If you want to train your cat to not eat the neighborhood songbirds, then I’m sure there’s someone out there who can tell you how to do it. (Can you even teach a cat to sit/stay?) To punish an animal for it’s natural behavior is just wrong. My dogs may piddle inside but they get a T.R.E.A.T. when they piddle outside. Positive reinforcement works wonders for dogs.
I think there are just some things too hard wired to get rid of, though. Like trying to stop a kid from masturbating. It’s an urge–you can try all you like but I don’t think there’s any training strong enough to stop you from something like that.
A cat can learn how to walk with a bell and make no noise.
You do not punish a cat . It is a cat just being a cat. It is not a kid.
My first kitty would bring me birds with many a purrrrrr.
I would pat him a lot and tell him he was a great cat!
He would accept the praise and leave the (unharmed) bird at my feet.
I would pick up the bird-du-jour and carry it out when cat’s attention was elsewhere…
and bird would fly away once it got over the shock of living through being caught!
No harm done. I don’t think he ever caught the same bird twice.
He wasn’t hungry… he just wanted to feed us.
Please don’t punish your kitty for wanting to feed you. If hunting really bothers you, keep kitty in.
I thought cats basically domesticated themselves, started living with people when they realized they could trade pest control services for tummy rubs.
I wish my cat could catch something. She can’t even catch bugs, and that’s including the ones that don’t fly. She’d never know what to do with a bird.
Please realise that your experience is not universal. In some parts it is considered cruel and unusal to keep a cat locked away indoors far far away from its natural habitat.
My family was a cat family, never once have we had an “indoors only” cat.
I think your cat’s natural habitat is Northern Africa. Anywhere else it’s more like an invader species that some people feel sentimental about.
Yeah, and what natural habitat is that? The one where the cat was introduced to after being brought over from Egypt and other parts of Africa? The one where a domestic cat hasn’t been “naturally” a part of for generations?
There is no need for a domestic pet cat to be outdoors. But people who are going to let their cats roam outdoors shouldn’t fucking piss on if the cat gets injured, ill or otherwise harms itself or other creatures, because they bought it on themselves.
I wonder how many of those people who claim “you should never punish a cat for doing what it naturally does” would say the same if it were the case of a dog killing stray cats, an instinct lots of dogs have unless they were brought up to behave differently.
If the dog was roaming free, I’d have the same harsh words for the dog owner.
If the dog was secured in a fenced back yard, and the cats roamed into the yard, then it’s the cats’ owners’ problem and the dog shouldn’t be punished for that any more than a cat should be punished for killing a bird.
Why all the anger? Who is “pissing on here” about cat’s getting sick.
Someone’s made a tongue in cheek post about their cat catching a bird. Quite simple really.
And I dunno, but to all intensive porpoises, “outside” is now the natural habitat for cats where I am. Sure maybe millenia ago the came from Egypt (I dunno if acccurate or not, I can’t be arsed researching) but I am looking at now.
NOBODY I knew growing up had an inside only cat. It simply didn’t happen. And even feral cats were not sickly or anything else - yeah, many were carriers of feline flu or whatever it’s called, but that didn’t end their lives.
And for what its worth, none of our cats got injured from wandering outside - but they did like to bring us rabbits, birds and mice. 
Well, near Downtown Houston, indoors-only cats can have excellent lives. And longer ones than the kitties owned by people who dislike cleaning litter boxes.
Back home in Egypt it was probably different.
You don’t train a cat to stop scratching. You give the cat a scratching post and you clip its nails frequently.
You don’t train a cat to stop shitting. You train a cat that there’s a litter box and that’s where it’s supposed to go.
You don’t train a cat to stop hunting. You can stop them from going outside to find new things to hunt.
It is very very difficult, if not impossible, to train a cat to STOP doing something you disapprove of. The best you’re going to be able to do is redirect its natural instincts into an acceptable outlet.