This kind of cruelty is a sign of mental illness. It’s a warning that something is very wrong and it needs to be followed up. Society has a right to protect itself from those that lack empathy or compassion.
>>This kind of cruelty is a sign of mental illness. It’s a warning that something is very wrong and it needs to be followed up. Society has a right to protect itself from those that lack empathy or compassion.<<
I disagree with the first sentence, agree with the second, and sort of agree with the third. It’s because I have grown up both in the city and on and around farms/ranches. The two areas promote a very, VERY different approach to the empathy one has towards animals.
Many people who grow up in the city and only see animals as pets or the “disney” episodes showing how cute Racoons are usually tend to give animals strong human attributes. For such a person to do this to a cat would be unthinkable. And a person raised in this environment that would do something like this would be suspected (and maybe rightly so) of the very mental illness you suggest.
However, a person raised on a farm may have such a low respect for the “feelings” of any animal that they could do such a thing just to “watch what happens” and yet never, in their wildest dreams, consider any such cruelty to a human. They just see animals more like “trees”. A person of this type may not be mentally ill but could actually be acting out against the owner of the cat who they may have perceived (rightly or wrongly) to have wronged them. Bad behavior, no doubt, but not the psychopathic behavior many suggest.
To that vein, I know a “farmer” who is one of the nicest, compassionate, men you will ever meet. He is a missionary to Africa and Haiti. Yet, a month after his daughter was born, his 1 year old dog angrily bit at him. His solution? He got the rifle, plugged the dog, and threw the carcass off the edge of the property into a holler for the turkey buzzards. Case closed.
No, he is not insane. He just knows the difference between a human and a dog, and is able to assess risk to his human daughter.
This is often a clash of American subcultures and the sensibilities they foment as anything else. Country people and city people just act bad in different ways.
FWIW, I went out with my son in law and one of his high school buddies in South Dakota one winters day to participate in what is universally considered “fun” in that area. We drive out on one of the dirt roads surrounding all the flooded land and, using a 223 rifle with a scope, and without leaving the vehicle, shoot muskrats swimming between bushes. Then you drive off to get the next one. I asked them later how many each had shot in his lifetime.
They figured about 800 each. No, neither of them are crazy. Both very good family men. They just clearly know the difference between a nuisance rodent and a human being, or even a house pet.