Cats are amazing, I'd say, just as all animals are. Even humans :) The problem with cats is that they're just damned efficient when it comes to hunting. Birds, small mammals and lizard / amphibian populations get decimated when there are too many cats around. Which obviously isn't good. I believe a village / town in New Zealand is even intending to ban owning them as pets in the not-so-distant future as their native wildlife populations are suffering.

I used to have two cats as a kid (well my sisters did): Topsy (named after a character from the Topsy & Tim books my sister was reading) and Shirley (from Topsy's first litter of kittens and the only one we couldn't give away. She was as black as the ace of spades and my father liked Shirley Bassey....). Though they're both long dead now, they had amazing personality. The best part being they'd have a 'mad half hour' every evening. They'd suddenly go pyscho chasing anything (mainly each other) that moved. Thankfully, for the sake of the living room curtains, it was only really this time of the day that they ran up and down them.

Where bigger cats are concerned, I just read that lions get to have sex up to 50 times a night according to google (I'm sure I learnt it was more like upto 200 times a night when I studied them at university). So there are worse animals to come back as should you get the chance?

Their shit really can stink though, I have to admit.