Animal abuse charges, I don't really think so. Mental evaluation of the person that did this prank is more appropriate.
I would hesitate about mental evaluation. I think a parent, teacher, minister, rabbi or priest would be far better equipped to respond than a shrink could ever dream of being. I speak from bitter experience on this (not on animal cruelty, just on other stupid kid things I did that got “medicalized”). You are 100% correct in your instinct that the criminal justice system is the wrong way to handle this.
we probably would have done that when we were kids like tying firecrackers to a cats tail man that wuz fun