With regard to your second question:

Saint Augustine (354-430 A.D.) discussed this question in his "On The Literal Meaning of Genesis", suggesting that predation is part of creation's intrinsic design:

"But one might ask why brute beasts inflict injury on one another, for there is no sin in them for which this could be a punishment, and they cannot acquire any virtue by such a trial. The answer, of course, is that one animal is the nourishment of another. To wish that it were otherwise would not be reasonable. For all creatures, as long as they exist, have their own measure, number, and order. Rightly considered, they are all praiseworthy and all the changes that occur in them, even when one passes into another, are governed by a hidden plan that rules the beauty of the world and regulates each according to its kind."

St Basil of Caesarea, (~329-379) in his 9th Homily on the Six Days, gives the anatomy of predators as an example of God's creative power, and I think he can be taken as implying that carnivory is a necessary aspect of these creature's lives:

"If you examine the members even of animals, you will find that the Creator has given them nothing superfluous, that He has omitted nothing that is necessary. To carnivorous animals He has given pointed teeth which their nature requires for their support. Those that are only half furnished with teeth have received several distinct receptacles for their food."

St Thomas Aquinas, (1225-1274) certainly no theological scrub, seems to have taken a similar view in his Summa Theologica:

"In the opinion of some, those animals which now are fierce and kill others, would, in that state [i.e. prior to the Fall] , have been tame, not only in regard to man, but also in regard to other animals. But this is quite unreasonable. For the nature of animals was not changed by man's sin, as if those whose nature now it is to devour the flesh of others, would then have lived on herbs, as the lion and falcon. Nor does Bede's gloss on Gn. 1:30, say that trees and herbs were given as food to all animals and birds, but to some. Thus there would have been a natural antipathy between some animals."

So it seems that there were a number of prominent theologians who took the view that carnivory was initially present in creation, prior to the Fall.