668 – Abū al-Zubayr said: “I asked Jābir about selling a cat or a dog, and he replied, ‘The Prophet ﷺ forbade that.’” Related by Muslim and al-Nasāʾī, the latter adding: “except a hunting dog.” ⦗1⦘

Hadith grading:
Al-Nasāʾī’s extra clause was judged weak by Imām Aḥmad, rejected by al-Nasāʾī himself, and likewise declared weak by al-Nawawī and al-Suyūṭī, who relate the unanimous agreement of hadith scholars on this point.

Glossary:
• al-sinnūr: with a kasrah on the sīn and a doubled nūn, meaning cat, a domesticated member of the feline family; feminine sinnūrah, plural sinānīr.
• dog (kalb): originally every vicious predator, but in usage the term has become specific to the barking animal; plurals aklub and kilāb, feminine kalbah, plurals kilāb and kalabāt.
• “forbade that” (zajara ʿan dhālik): to prohibit forcefully, commanding one to desist from selling the animal and benefiting from its price.
• hunting (ṣayd): to capture game after effort; the quarry is maṣīd, the hunter ṣāʾid.

Legal insights:

1. The hadith indicates the prohibition of selling a cat and the unlawfulness of its price, even though keeping a cat without need is permissible, since no prohibition exists regarding mere possession. This is reinforced by the authentic report: “A woman was cast into the Fire for imprisoning a cat; she neither fed it while she kept it nor released it so that it could eat the vermin of the earth.”