The Zebras are Proud Warrior Race Guys
This explains why they hate your kittens when you trade with them, since they look down on the naturally cute kitties as weaklings. However, when you play in Iron Will mode, where you cannot get any extra kittens, they respect you and see you as a badass since you're doing all this hard work in a harsh environment all by yourself, hence they come to your aid as hunters.The A.I. destroys stuff when it reaches a certain level because it's bored.
Let's be honest: how many people have seen the videos of cats knocking stuff off of tables for seemingly no reason? Well, when you take a sapient collection of cats, and have them make an A.I., chances are said A.I. is going to inherit several personality quirks inherent to the entire species. Except in this case, "knocking cups and pens off a table" translates to "wrecking the supply stores of my creators". Notably, the A.I won't increase in level if Gigaflops are consumed, which only happens when you have an Entanglement Station. Because it's too busy/distracted running the Entanglement Station, the A.I. can't rise up and break things.