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I'd probably go with number 2 and a bit of 3. I would likely think slightly worse of someone who acts that way, but not to the point I'd say or do much about it.
I think that the majority of our intuitions about the distasteful nature of torturing animals arises from the fact that, in the modern day, the majority of people who do such a thing are socio/psychopaths and hence dangerous to their fellow man.
This is not a universal unchanging truth! You don't have to go very far back in time to find societies and cultures where randomly kicking dogs and torturing cats was no big deal, and great fun for the whole gang. Even today, many small kids will tear wings off flies without being sociopaths or psychopaths. They get trained out of expressing such behavior.
If a person got their kicks out of torturing animals, but didn't demonstrate other reasons for me to be concerned about them, I don't really care.
On a slight tangent, I don't care about animal rights or welfare. The fact that a cutesy little cow had to die to make a steak means nothing to me. I'm still only human, so I feel bad if I see someone mistreat a dog, and might occasionally intervene if my emotions get too strong. That's an emotional response, not an intellectual one, because I think the crime they're commuting is equivalent to property damage, and they have the right to treat their own property as they will. This doesn't stop me from loving my own two dogs, and being willing to use severe violence on anyone who'd hurt them. But it's the fact that they're my dogs that makes it so, and I wouldn't donate money to the RSPCA.
Thanks for explaining, I get where you're coming from better now.
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