There is only two known scenarios to me in this regard that make sense, the first that I already mentioned is somebody had some kind of bad experience as a child or young adult with an stressed out/difficult animal and got attacked. The other one is the one you mentioned, somebody being a psychopath who gets off at mistreating weaker beings than himself because he suffers from some serious inferiority complexes and can finally feel power and superiority over an animal and lacks any empathy whatsoever.
My dad always talked about how he hates cats and what deceitful creatures they are, because he got scratched by a cat as kid and never had any positive experience with a cat since then, but when we got a fluffy little cat fren here and she started purring at him and let him pet him he eventually ended up being the most affectionate to this cat.