In survival currently, dogs are invincible to direct blows from a player, however, cats for some reason aren't. One could even say cats are more useful in survival than dogs are so it makes no sense for them not to have the same protections. I propose that cats have the same protection as dogs because sadly, I too have lost a cat to a player who will not be named. I believe this is an easy thing to implement and will drastically improve the survivability and lifespan of cats on survival. Real 100% true image of a cat on survival while not under claim protection (Dogs still get protection from hits while not in a claim and cats don't!)
Unfortunately, it seems as if this is not a built-in feature with the GriefPreventionData plug-in that we use to protect claims, therefore the exact implementation to protect cats is not possible since there is no setting denoted in the plug-in's files. I will see if I can get our developer to find a workaround and potentially add this feature in the plug-in since it is open-sourced.