Such
wanton cruelty is especially deplorable, because it disposes the
perpetrators to be cruel also to men. As St. Thomas says (1a 2a, q.
102, art. 6, ad 8):
"Because the passion of pity arises from the afflictions of others,
and it happens even to brute animals to feel pain, the affection of
pity may arise in man even about the afflictions of animals.
Obviously, whoever is practised in the affection of pity towards
animals, is thereby more disposed to the affection of pity towards
men: whence it is said in Proverbs xii. 10: 'The just regardeth the
lives of his beasts, but the bowels of the wicked are cruel.' And
therefore the Lord, seeing the Jewish people to be cruel, that He
might reclaim them to pity, wished to train them to pity even towards
brute beasts, forbidding certain things to be done to animals which
seem to touch upon cruelty. And therefore He forbade them to seethe
the kid in the mother's milk (Deut. xiv. 21), or to muzzle the
treading ox (Deut. xxv. 4), or to kill the old bird with the young."
(Deut. xxii. 6, 7.)
3. It is wanton cruelty to vex and annoy a brute beast _for sport_.
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