The key word in your dictionary definition is wilfully
You perceive the cat’s action as being wilfully cruel, but the cat isn’t behaving wilfully, it’s acting instinctively and in a perfectly normal way within the world of cats, just as you are in the world of humans.
Or are you suggesting that cats have free will, morals and are capable of making ethical decisions?
Conversely, I wonder if the instinct to run over animals with a car is also inherited from natural behaviour, and isn’t cruel just like the cat toying with a mouse, because it’s an un-considered action. We can certainly rationalise it as cruel afterwards, even breaking the pattern of behaviour for that reason. I have to consciously try not to hit pheasants or rabbits that run across the road because to do so is quite instinctive.
Regarding playing with food, don’t orcas and dolphins also deliberately hurt their prey before killing it in ways that don’t look like hunting practice?
Of course not, but there are many instances of animals within the same species choosing to behave differently and equally an animal who displays affection or consideration for another within, or outwith, the same species can be described as being so (affectionate or considerate) from our human point of view.
What makes it do one or the other is as much a mystery as it is deciding why humans make different choices and make different decisions.
Affection and cruelty are more than simply polar opposites. One might argue that the former is instinctive and in that sense can be found in many animals that are closely related, whereas the latter requires free will and a conscious transgression of the moral, and as such is effectively confined to humans and possibly their ancestors.
I mentioned in an earlier post the possibility of cruelty existing amongst some of the great ape communities - - it’s discussed in Cat Bohannon’s recent book Eve, but the examples we’ve been discussing are interspecies and I’d argue that cruelty is a virtually entirely human phenomenon. Humans can be and all too often are cruel to animals, but animals can’t be cruel to humans or indeed to other animals (with a few possible exceptons).
Humans assigning essentially human attributes to non- human animals often happens, but this doesn’t mean the animal actually possesses such qualities, but rather it is displaying behaviour that resembles some of the quality’s attributes .
I wonder, perhaps if we’re being a little too man-centric. Maybe better to ask how it is from the victim’s perspective, and whether they are suffering regardless of how the one inflicting pain understands the morals of their actions.
Frankly, it really doesn’t matter whether the cat/dolphin/human can recognise they have acted immorally .
Not sure if you intended the above sentence to read the way it comes across to me, but I’d argue that surely emphasised textit does matter whether or not an individual human can recognise that they’ve acted immorally.
That sentence needs to be read in the context of the first section. If you are being harmed, it doesn’t matter whether the agency of harm knows what they do is wrong or not, because it makes no difference to the harm caused. So it doesn’t matter a jot to the mouse that there’s nothing morally wrong about a cat getting pleasure from hurting a mouse - the mouse is still hurt, and the cat is likely to experience pleasure at causing the pain of the mouse.
It’s all a bit deep for the fact that animals will be animals in the end 
Not sure its pleasure, its just what cats do…
Would have replied earlier, but had overlooked your post.
Is it instinct? I wouldn’t have thought so, if only on the lowest level, because of the damage it can do to the car. I had a low flying pheasant go through the plastic insert in the stainless steel grille of a Mercedes Having the engine bay cleaned cost more than the replacement grille - and the pheasant was way beyond edible.
Whereas, swerving in a Hi-Lux in order to run over a puff adder seems fairly intentional. Mind you glad we don’t have them in the rocks around our property, I’d never stop worrying about our animaux de compagnie (a far more flattering term than ‘pet’)
If we are ever killed in an inexplicable car accident involving no other cars you will know that it was because OH swerved to avoid an ant, or possibly a butterfly, snail, mouse, or other small creature.
Is he Jain Jones…?
I find this slightly alarming as one if the first things I was taught when I started driving was to avoid running over snakes, and if you do then try to check the rearview mirror to check said snake still on road! The browns in Oz seem to flick up and wrap around axels so if that happens you get out and get bit (and dead!). I remember as a young driver not having seen the snake so arrived at nan and pa’s farm beeping madly so pa could check, with shovel in hand, before I got out 
Ordinary puff adders are too short and fat for that sort of stunt - they’re a bit like a boldly patterned draught excluder. But very dangerous to dogs and horses.
So fat!!!
Cars haven’t always been so softly made.
I will try to avoid catching something if at all possible, but there’s definitely a part of me that wants to get it.
It’s not the sensual pleasure of being stroked, but pleasure of control and supremacy. You can almost see them smiling. It makes complete sense for performance of an instinctual act to bring pleasure as a reinforcement of behaviour.
This has been an interesting discussion. I could never understand why some of the children at school were so utterly horrible. In retrospect they were likely just following their instincts like the unreasoning little beasts that they were. Enjoying the pain they caused without ever stopping to question why.
Cars haven’t always been so softly made.
It was actually a beautifully made and very substantial vehicle - all the brightware was polished stainless . Exactly like this one apart from being RHD. My then partner said it looked like something a Mancunian drug dealer might drive, but this was thirty years ago…
You can get stickers to place on the window to stop the birds thinking it is sky.
After that Robin flew against my windscreen I found out that 70% of birds that seem fine after a collision actually die shortly afterwards.
The stickers are not expensive and don’t need to be ugly either.
You need to space them quite closely. Hanging ropes about 2” apart is better.
