I always wondered this myself. I've been through three cats and they all seem to just delight in pushing around, tossing around and generally making their prey items exit from this world as unpleasant as possible. Are cats really just pure evil?
Let's take it back to the savanna. When a cheetah(solitary predator) wants to kill a gazelle, it wants to make things as easy for itself as possible.
The first step would be to pick an easy target. A young, old, or injured prey item will put up much less of a fight than a healthy animal in its prime.
It also helps a great deal if your quarry can be singled out somehow. Even better if you can limit its movement using environment(and in the case of pack hunters, encircling, flushing out tactics, laying in wait to strike from different directions during the chase, etc.).
Next comes the actual killing part. With my cheetah example, these cats don't have the jaw strength to actually break an animals windpipe/neck, but they can close it off and essentially suffocate their prey item. This is a grueling tactic and can be quite dangerous if the prey wants to keep putting up a fight to the very end, and they all do.
So what's a better way? A strategy that can be more likened to guerrilla warfare than anything. Hit and maybe not run, but stay back. Hit the prey hard and do some damage. Hopefully cause some broken bones and a lot of bleeding. Then just hang back and follow until the prey gets weak or maybe starts to drop its guard, then hit again. Do this over and over in order to achieve a kill while minimizing risk to yourself.
Now this might not make sense with a little mouse or bird, but instinct doesn't always take exception. The cat hangs back and swipes at its quarry from time to time to make sure that it is dead. This is normal predatory behavior and backed with sound logic.A cornered animal can often be in its most dangerous and ferocious form.
Humans use this behavior too. Take that old book called "the art of war." In it it states that you should strike when your opponents are at their most vulnerable, advance when they retreat, and retreat when they advance. It's all very logical and it's quite obvious why cats would hunt this way.
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