I feel like the idea that an animal life is worth less than a human life is demonstrably true at a societal level though, right?

Society will make all sorts of fucked up (and some not-so-fucked up) decisions about what’s acceptable and what’s not, “true” is not the right word here.

Like, we don’t sell human parts at a grocery store to eat, and I feel like people would call it a moral tragedy if we did.

Selling cat parts would be seen as a moral tragedy too, at least in my society.

If an animals life is equivalent to a humans, then meat is in fact murder, no?

Life eats life, an organism that kills for biological need isn’t a murderer (though our diet + modern factory farming system arguably is). Killing a conscious being of any species unnecessarily can be considered murder I’d say. If there was an animal that (still existed anyways) evolved to eat humans, it would not be murder for it to eat.

Ultimately, humans are not inherently more entitled to anything, including life, more than any other species, though society is likely to disagree.

I’d choose

1 - cat

2 - human cat

3 - because the fallout from the human death will be more than from the cat, and could itself include a pet death or cat in a cage for years (people tend to not care much about a deceased person’s cat).

3 - I’m changing my answer after reading a few others. They’re right, I am responsible for my cats, they are my family and I promised to care for them.