Your definitely on the right track, I would just not advertise for people at this point. Keep doing the same cats for awhile.

It is very hard once you have done someone's animal for free, to charge them later. I only have a few people that I did that with, but, I shot A LOT of their dogs. I still do their dogs for free because they still help me out quite a bit.

The rapport with cats will definitely help quite a bit. Work on lighting, angles, all that kind of good stuff