This story sort of hits home for me. About a month ago when I had relatives visiting, this same sort of thing happened at my house. My cousin is 5, but very smart for her age. She was always terrorizing our kitten. The kitten was almost 2 months old, and our cat was its mother, so we had cared for it since birth. We told the girl over and over, about every 10 minutes, to stop playing with the kitten. She refused to listen to us and the next day we found her carrying it around with a rope she had tied around its neck. I ran to get scissors and had to cut the ribbon off of the kittens neck. She was trying to gasp for air as I cut the ribbon. I was scared to death and we almost lost the one kitten that we had kept from the litter. The sad thing is my aunt didn't even yell or punish my cousin. We just told them to get out of our house and haven't talked to them since. Maybe I should e-mail this link to my aunt? Maybe that will make her realize her ignorance for not punishing or yelling at her.
Other things she did to the cat were hiding her in the freezer, hiding her in the dresser drawer, and picking it up by her paws. We tried to put the cat in the basement or hide it from her, but she kept finding it and disobeying her parents, cousins, and aunt/uncle. :headshake