The interesting thing about cruelty is that it is a co-invention of the Sapiens line and evolution. For all but the “highest” animals cruelty is not a thing. The suffering we see all around us in the natural world is probably “cruel” in our eyes alone, a product of our developing both empathy and a sense of morality. The cat playing with the mouse almost certainly isn’t capable of vicariously experiencing the mouse’s suffering, let alone attaching a moral value to inflicting that experience intentionally; we are. I find the fact that we developed this intellectual/emotional judgement of the natural suffering around us through the thoroughly pragmatic process of evolution to be “miraculous” beyond the imagined miracles of religion.