the thing to understand in the "cat V/S non-cat" debate is this;
they are different both have advantages and disadvantages.
cat stoves generally are longer burning, but slower to react. they tend to be more involved in maintaining though not horribly so. their best feature stupidly long burn times. achilles heel, they dont do small fires very well at all. good, they are a steadier performer , usually you dont see runaways or spikes with them as you do with non-cats, bad , they are a bit more involved to operate (ie closing bypass too soo and such) also bad , cats are expensive and they do wear out though with proper use and goob burning habits they will last for upwards of a decade in a lot of cases. i personally burned an englander 24-ac for 13 years without having to replace the cat (i did finally replace it to test out a different type of cat at that point but the applied ceramis cat i had in her was still fully operable with minimal wear)
non cats best point is that you get the ease of operation of a traditional stove with modern efficiency. clean glass, and relatively long burn times as well. down side is they tend to spike unless you stay on top of them when firing or reloading until the coaling stage is well underway. they tend to be less maintenance intensive and they give the option of burning a small fire which a cat stove really doesnt like to do.
all in all, ive been in the business on the manufacturing side for close to 20 years and grew up with englander stoves from one of the first hundred that was built by the company's founder(that i loaded as a child) to the pellet stove i run at home today. ive burned cat stoves , non cats and pre epa units, seen them evolve into todays modern units. ive said this to give some weight to what im saying now; both types of stoves are perfectly fine in what they do, both have good and not as good points. what it boils down to is this one isnt necessarily better than the other, its personal preference to the features of the type.