Gio, you certainly must have had a bad stove. I feel for you on that as it has to be pretty darned disappointing.
It is really funny when I think back to when we were ready to buy a new stove. We'd heard some badmouthing of cat. stoves and we sort of made up our minds that we would not have anything to do with them. However, after looking at several stoves we decided that we really wanted to look at the Woodstock stoves again. We had looked at them many moons ago but didn't want to spend the dollars then as we didn't have too many extra ones.
The first thing we noticed was that the Woodstock stoves had cats! Wow. That surprised us that such a top company as Woodstock would have them when we had heard so much negatives. We checked them further. Long story short, we bought one....and have not been sorry. You do not have to baby sit this stove. Fill it, set the controls and enjoy the heat.
On your second post you questioned our fuel needs. After our first year I decided to not claim a 50% reduction in fuel because that was only one year. However, after the hard winter we had this year, even though we are not done heating, I am now claiming a 50% reduction and yes, we are staying much warmer.
Our old stove was a big old Ashley. No, it was not an up to date stove nor did it have a cat. It threw some decent heat for sure and was easy operating, easy loading, easy emptying ashes, etc., etc. However, we constantly fought creosote with this stove because it had an automatic draft. If we were to be gone for some time and at nights when we filled the stove, the draft would constantly open and close. When it closed, the smoke would sit in the chimney and turn to tar. We cleaned that chimney as many as six times in one year. We burned up to and even in excess of 7 cords per year. We averaged at least six per year. Last year we burned just shy of 3 cords. This year looks like it will be just a tad over 3 cords.