The way cats work is that they're much more intelligent than they ever let on, apparently. A cat is just too smart to stoop to the level of a human being!

Nah, they let on just fine. It's just that cats communicate in their own terms and tend to think we're kind of stupid, which from their perspective is fair enough. They don't look to us for validation the way dogs do, or go out of their way to make themselves legible; they don't much care what we think of them. Some people have trouble with that.

I never have, but I've also known cats most of my life, starting when my mom decided the best way for me to learn their manners was to let them teach me themselves. It worked well enough to make me one of those people who gets along perfectly well even with somebody's cat who "doesn't like anybody!" - I can't count how many times I've heard that or variations on it. So maybe I'm biased, or maybe I'm speaking from greater knowledge. Make of it what you like, I suppose.

I could say the same about cockroaches.

I can respect a cockroach, though I don't welcome their company. You could say the same about wasps, and I get along fine with them too. Granted, like cats, wasps don't play on easy mode for humans. Nor should they; it's good for us to be reminded every now and again that we don't actually own this planet, no matter how much we like to think we do.

But really, we could say the same about almost any other animal on Earth, because almost no animal on Earth has been as extensively modified to suit human preferences and purposes as has C. familiaris. Absent the most extreme provocation, and sometimes even in its presence, they like us no matter what we do. Why not? We've spent several thousand years seeing to it that should be so.

So I'm not really sure what you're expecting you're going to prove with this whole line of discussion beyond that you like dogs and have some very strange notions about cats, neither of which points I think by now requires any further elaboration.