Tigers and roaches

I got a little bit of kindness from our mother raised tiger two days ago. She did not shift out when she should have, and so had to stay inside for a little bit in a 'time out'. She was mad that she didn't get to go out, and was whining, just like any kid who didn't do what they were told. So I went and sat with her. There was a lot of roaring and spitting at first, as she always does. But after a few minutes of my own quiet sitting and "grooming" myself, she calmed down. I put my head down on an exposed pipe, and pretended like I was resting. She came over and sniffed, and lay down by the mesh. Now this cat hates humans, to the extent that she wants nothing to do with us unless we have food. She roars, jumps at the mesh, growls etc if we are doing anything but feeding her. But this time she acutally rubbed against the mesh, a clear sign of camraderie and solicitation for attention. I tried to react slowly by talking, but that was too much and she started growling again, but rubbed against the mesh again. The poor girl doesn't know what she wants. But it just shows that a lonely creature wants companionship no matter the personality/aggression/or nature of the beast. Now, if there had been no mesh, I promise I would be dinner. But even then, our common beingness can still meet, shake hands, seek a hug, find commonality. Even when she wants to destroy me.The Buddha's first disciples were said to be a litter of reincarnated tiger cubs that had been saved by an earlier incarnation of the Buddha. The cubs and their mother were starving when the Buddha(in a previous life) happened upon them. He saw their suffering, and thought first of getting them food. Then realized that getting them meat meant killing another being. He could not make that choice. So he decided to sacrifice himself to the tigers so that they could live. These tiger cubs lived on, died, and much later reincarnated as the first disciples of the Buddha.
Here again the commonality of beingness, that you and i and birds and cats and tigers are all the same, made of the same stuff, have similar feelings, and can suffer. Now, this may be a radical example. But I completely understand his desire. As a person who has worked closely with a wide variety of animals, from crocodiles to giraffes, from raptors to great apes, I see that each and every animal has intelligence, feelings, and deserves respect and compassion. There is a spectrum to be sure, but who am I to determine what is better or worse, who am I to think that there could be a better or worse??  Is the fruit fly any less deserving of respect than the orangutan? Form is emptiness emptiness is form.
But as a lay person, those conflicts are unavoidable. It is all well and good to say that we should not squash a mosquito, but we put out traps for roaches, or have a bug zapper, or hit a bug on the windshield driving to an animal rights fundraiser. Or, in my very specific case, be mostly a vegetarian, but feed 75 lbs of horse meat to tigers every day.
But lately, I have been trying to be aware of the animals that gave their lives so that my tigers could eat, so that the public had animals to look at, so that I had a way to communicate to them about conservation and why we need to care about tigers, their ecosystem, and the people that live around tigers. I hope that this makes their deaths worthy. And my guilt be reduced. But perhaps this is all my pretty little delusion.