My father, still alive at age 92 was somewhat abusive to animals. I've seen him when I was a child, and older, abuse several animals over the course of growing up under his parentage. On one occasion, I was forced to take a hammer and kill some kittens I'd "adopted" from the neighbor. Basically they were feral cats, although young enough that I'd caught them, and had them hidden out, feeding them milk when I could sneak away. My actions were somewhat lacking in judgement, but I was like eight years old at the time, and had no personal pets. He'd heard the kittens mewling, searched them out and found them, and realized I was hiding, thus came the edict to kill them. Not long after that, I caught a female collie and drug her home to our little farm. She had a litter of puppies which he shot when they were around three months old. He had some justification. They played rough, and liked to pull at my clothes, tearing them, so they were a nuisance in that respect. Later he shot the collie when she came in season because he didn't want more puppies. I've seen him take pick handles and shovels to cows in the dairy barn when he milked them because they were giving him a problem going into their proper stall. Some years later, after I'd grown, I worked for a veterinary hospital. My parents had bought another dairy, were milking on the average of 45 cows daily. They operated it as a family, so the younger siblings had to work their tails off in order to keep things going. They didn't have a family pet. I had a young Australian Blue Heeler come in to be put to sleep, so took the dog up to the kids. The dog survived a couple years on the farm, then my dad shot it because in his estimation it took too much time to take care of. There are more instances of his cruel and unjust treatment of animals, but I'd spend hours relating those things. As far as being abusive to my mother and my siblings, as well as myself, (I'm the eldest of five children), he was very much so. Even going so far as telling me not once but several times in the past 10 years or so, that he'd be in prison now if the authorities had found out just how abusive he was. He's been a witness since 1949. His most common comment about why he's lived so long, is to wonder if Jehovah has kept him alive because of the bad things he's done in his life. As to whether he's a sociopath, I'm not qualified to diagnose his mental illnesses. I do know that he suffers from anxiety problems, and has for probably 50 years at least.
