Should animal abuse be considered violent crime

[Catherine]

You are right on all counts. The issue is not what or who someone is cruel towards, but rather the fact that that they are cruel. We draw these artificial lines between people and animals and we used to draw lines between male and female(in some countries we still do) and different racial and ethnic groups.
We need to recognize that cruelty in itself is the crime, not who or why or any other reason that excuses it.

Until we work on the root cause no one is safe. I wish we knew why some people are cruel. I wish we could fix them. Until we do we must stop making excuses, like "It was only and animal, not a person". As long as we dismiss animals like that we are part of the cruelty.