Can you share some thoughts about what your belief says about animal rights?

I'm a cat loving atheist who owns a cat that happens to have been thrown into a dumpster when she was a kitten. I have no idea why this woman did what she did and I don't know whether or not she suffers from mental illness. Her behavior is very, very strange. Her body language is way too relaxed for somebody who is about to do what she was about to do. It's almost as if she identified the cat as a banana peel or something that needs to be thrown away rather than a living thing. I honestly don't know how to react, its just so strange.