You can, and animal rights and criminalizing abuse is slowly improving across the globe I think. But the cruelty that is illegal doesn't cover a lot of entrenched cruelty, like conflating their lives with our convenience and dropping your pet off at a shelter to be killed later, or taking your pet to a vet to be killed now, or do it yourself in many places, or leaving a baby animal alone all day, or chaining animals up permanently, or spending all day in a carry bag, etc etc.