Ok, I'ma chime in because I love cats without reservation and because my J is just over the line.
JJJ, you don't know jack about cats, is the problem. And most people don't know anything about cats.
I have had cats my entire life, since I was a baby. Cats are faithful companions just like dogs. I've never had a cat who wouldn't come when I called it, even out of a sound sleep. I've never had a cat that didn't meet me at the door when I came home. My current rescue Maine Coon runs straight to the bed and wants me to lie down so she can rub herself up and down me and she purrs so hard it makes the bedsprings vibrate. She seeks me out for affection, she paws at me to pet her, she chirps lovey sounds at me. She scratched me once, one time, because the comb I was using on her pulled her hair. She scratched me with such precision, one claw, one scratch down the center of my thumb that drew blood and stung like a paper cut. So you can see she was not trying to hurt me, just to tell me I was hurting her. When I showed her that the scratch hurt me, the next time I inadvertently pulled her hair while grooming her, she mimicked scratching me and made sure her claws never touched me. (I've since thrown that comb out.)
My cat sits in the window and cries for me when I'm gone more than three days or so. I've begun to take her with me when I have to travel, because she grieves so hard when I leave. This is from the pet sitter, not my own observation. The pet sitter called me and asked me if I would talk to the cat on the phone(!) because she seemed to miss me so much. She put the phone on speaker and I talked to the cat like I do when I'm petting her. The pet sitter said she was purring and kissing the phone.
You most certainly can train cats. It takes some patience and you have to have developed a relationship with the cat first. Then it is essential to realize about cats that everything they do involves a considered decision. They don't refuse because they don't know what you want; they refuse because they reserve the right to make their own decisions. I totally respect that. The best way to ask a cat to do something is to ask for it and then look away and display that you are totally unattached to the outcome and it is their decision. WHEN you make it clear that it is a request and not a demand, the cat will do what you ask, as long as it understands. It's not hard to make them understand, either. It's more of "Would you care to?" than "Do this."
Attributes of cats:
fidelity
devotion
gentleness
sweetness
grace
agility
intelligence
self-possession
poise
inquisitiveness
playfulness ...
Dogs are great, too, but yeah, I don't want a creature that I have to tie a rope around its neck and escort it outdoors to pee, otherwise it will void all over the carpet. I can take myself to the bathroom and so can my cat. I scoop her box the second she uses it, just like I flush the toilet immediately after I use it, and neither of our bathrooms smell.
I had one cat who pooped on my bed when I would not entertain his requests for attention. He only started that after I broke his heart by leaving for several days, and the cat sitter service I had hired did not show up for two days, unbeknownst to me. If I had not had 20 minutes to rush home and check on him, I would not have known. Anyway. He felt betrayed and he was angry, and if he wanted to be petted or me to stop what i was doing and play with him and I did not, soon after I would smell the evidence; he would poop on the pillow I lay my head on, not the other one. It was very clearly a message.
But see, a dog would turn around and eat that.
(That's right. I said it.)
I chalk up the anti-cat sentiment to ignorance. It's like people who think dogs are inherently vicious because they once saw one snarl.
I do not take for granted my cat would eat me, for pete's sake. Has anyone else seen the film about the two guys who raised a lion cub and then released him into (an appropriate) wild ... and how the lion remembered them and greeted them with huge affection even years later? Or the PBS film about the leopard and the baboons who teased him constantly? He finally got ahold of the female baboon who was most merciless, not noticing that she had a tiny infant attached to her. The leopard did not eat the infant and did everything it could to take care of it. The baby died of cold and starvation up in the tree next to the leopard.