It's people who live in cities who join PETA.

The developed world is thoroughly urbanized. Des Moines is as far from animals as Manhattan. I think what you mean is that a certain politique ascendant on both coasts is much more likely to purchase animal rights as an expansion pack. Which is not to pre-judge the add-on, but to say it has very little to do with the size of your skyscrapers.

That said, I'm not disputing at all that modern agribusiness commodifies animals and that many of today's farmers and ranchers are pretty insulated from the things they eat.

There are many accounts of prayers to animals. One of the best-attested is of the Ainu prayers to the bears they worship (and kill.)

I'm not aware of any Western religion that says cruelty to animals is a sin

Well, that does exclude Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, which famously do have animal ethics. But even if we're just talking the western religions, then yeah, they do, too.

Without getting into a nasty debate involving proof-texting and what Atheists say the Bible says versus what Theists say the Bible says: if you go ask a few questions in the pertinent parts of Stack Exchange of Muslim, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, and Orthodox Jewish thinkers, I guarantee they will answer back that wanton cruelty to animals is wrong. And the same would be true if you started reading random imams, theologians, patriarchs, and pastors.

Individual interpretations, maybe

Unfortunately, there is no possible answer to this.

The Anglican Church was fine with bear-baiting. I don't think the Catholic Church complained about vivisection.

While the first and loudest opposition to cock-fighting and bear-baiting came from Puritans and Methodists, outside the Church of England's mainstream, these people were indisputably Anglicans at the beginning. And a voice of conscience from the margins of the culture is very common, and usually just means that the center of the culture has been captured by self-interest.

Catholics leaders were present at the beginning of the anti-vivisection movement.

it's certainly true that tribal cultures gave zero or negative weight to the well-being of competing tribes.

If this were true, tribes would be in constant total war, which is actually a foreign concept to most tribal societies. Read Napoleon Chagnon again. They kill out of self-interest, and out of revenge, but it's not constant and it's not something they feel awesome about.