Loving Animals - Where Are We Headed?

I love all creatures - all animals - and I definitely cry and grieve when a pet is lost.  On the other side, I also enjoy eating meat, along with fruits, grains, and vegetables.  I like red meat and white meat.  Some animals are raised for eating, and others are not.  I was brought up understanding this, and I always include whatever I'm eating in my mealtime prayer - thanking it for supplying me with food, to continue my life.  I love my two cats as much as I would love a child; they are my intimate companions.
  I have known a lot of people who have never connected, on a personal level, with anything other than another human, or with a machine (some men and their cars or trucks).  I have been asked many times, why do you care so much about animals?  They are just that - animals.  My response is that someone needs to care somewhere at sometime.  I don't relate well to people with no feelings or any empathy for other living things.  Animals feel fear, hunger, want and need - even if they don't use those terms.  We humans are animals, supposedly the most highly evolved species on our planet.  If we can't care for other creatures, who are supposed to be less intelligent than we are, are we really "human?"
   I was appalled to read about a 12-year-old horse in Alabama - she was found early one morning by her young owner, on the ground, covered in blood.  She had been stabbed in the neck 8 times, and one of the cuts had nicked her jugular vein.  Besides the stab wounds, the mare's wonderful, long chestnut mane had been hacked off.  Ruby was lucky to survive the attack; she had lost a lot of blood, and ended up spending two weeks at the veterinarian's stable block.  She lost a lot of weight, was dehydrated, and depressed. Once she was returned to her home pasture and barn, she began to heal and make much better physical progress. In the meantime, it has been decided that all horses at that barn will have very short, if not roached, manes, because the sheriff cannot guarantee that this is an isolated incident.
   Here in Boulder, I was shocked to read that the police had been called to a house on University Hill, where they found blood splatters all over the front porch, the front door, and the front of the house.  It was the blood of a raccoon.  Neighbors reported the young man living there was "beating something that screamed" with a stick or bat.  The young man admitted to killing the raccoon with a baseball bat, and gave the bat to the police as evidence.  He told police that he had "wanted the hide", and that when the raccoon hadn't died with the first blow, he felt remorse - but he continued to bludgeon it to death.  He took the police to a very raw and poorly cut raccoon skin that was covered under a layer of rock salt.  How can a person - a grown man - with "human" feelings do such a thing?
  I have killed a deer for food.  I have killed rattlesnakes after they struck and poisoned horses, cats, and dogs.  I have performed a few "mercy killings" - a young rabbit with a broken back that was keening terribly, a young chicken that a dog had attacked, and ripped off both legs and a wing.  But I killed those two quickly, and to prevent further suffering while the animal awaited an unpleasant death.  I killed the deer in season, with a hunting permit, for venison.  I admit I killed the rattlers in revenge and anger, and to rid the property of a poisonous, deadly snake.  -  But to kill because I "wanted a hide?"  To stab an innocent horse while removing it's protection from flies?  Those actions are not right or moral.
   As I get older, I wonder more and more about our younger generations - do they regard living organisms with any type of respect?  Or, in this age of iPhones and iPods and iPads, does the younger generation see every living thing as something to be used (to their satisfaction) and then thrown away?