Objective analysis of what one ought and ought not to love has no effect on the human heart at all. And love is what makes things more special that other things. 
The only thing I find upsetting other than the girl is people like you who try to compare the life of an animal to the life of a cat. We (most of us) live in the United States of America. You cannot be penalized for a crime you *might* commit later. You can only be sentenced based on what you did.
Yes, it takes a sick person to do something like that, but they should be punished for what they did. I realize that many people like cats and whatnot, but having soft fur doesn’t make one animal more special than another. If someone did that to a crow, we wouldn’t have this thread.
The first paragraph makes absolutely no sense at all. A) It’s totally irrelevant to what I post, and B) it simply makes no sense.
First, I am focused on what these people did, nothing else. This isn’t a post about hate speech or thought crimes.
Second, I don’t, contrary to what you presume, differentiate between a cat and a crow. Lighting a crow on fire to watch it suffer, a rat, mice for that matter is a) an early sign of a psycho, and b) disgusting disrespect for a living creature that should be punished.
“Yes, it takes a sick person to do something like that, but they should be punished for what they did” Who is talking about anything less?
“I realize that many people like cats and whatnot, but having soft fur doesn’t make one animal more special than another” Where did I suggest otherwise? In fact, if you actually read what I wrote, you’d see I believe this myself.
“If someone did that to a crow, we wouldn’t have this thread.” I agree not as many people would care and people would not be as emotional, but from a logical point of view, if you believe in respect for ALL life and detest vile behavior such as thing, lines based on human/aminal domesticated/wild shouldn’t make all that much of a difference. The difference lies in the circumstances and conduct. If a wild animal is about to eat a baby, fine, it’s life is secondary to that of the human. But lighting fire to a cat and then just saying, ah the hell with it, it’s only an animal anyway, kill it off, is the sort of “thinking” that makes people minimize life in the first place and leads to this sort of behavior.
Some horrid person/s tried to carve a tortoise out of it's shell recently. Don't know if it's still alive, or not. Lost it's legs, IIRC. Sick world. We had a pet raven once. Tried to teach it to say "never more". It sure could mimic my granddaughter's temper tantrums to a tee :-) Jack flew away one day, and we still hope he/she is alright.
Huh?
Objective analysis of what one ought and ought not to love has no effect on the human heart at all. And love is what makes things more special that other things.