Well, obviously the correct decision isn’t catpersons OR human partner. The correct decsion is catpersons AND human partner.
Although I would say that in many many instances the average person wouldn’t be a more satisfying sex partner than the average catperson. And that goes double for when the catperson is designed by genetically modified to have a human body and a cat’s brain, which is probably the quickest path to catpersons from here.
The real question is, is the ultimate value maximizing the number of human-years? How about the quest for knowledge? Improvement of the species?
Is saving 10 people from starvation (ie, funding the continued existence of 10 people, engaging in the typical activities of a subsistence agriculturist, and experiencing the normal pleasures/pains of a subsistence agriculturist’s life, of greater value than, say, funding one person working to figure out how to increase human being’s peak IQ? [although, of course, fill in here the research question that you think is the most important]
I’d say that the average subsistence agriculturalist isn’t contributing anything (and CAN’T contribute anything) to the most valuable activities mankind is currently engaged in.