I wanted to use cycles strand rendering on a subject and decided to start with a cat. This is what I ended up with. It took 1 hour to render to 100 samples 1600x1200.
Any feedback would be good. I wasn’t completely happy with the face model, ears and eyes.
Looks great.
Ears just slightly more pointed. The cheeks and side of mouth shouled be moved in a little; their faces a little more pointed and if it was a siamese then that would be more emphasised. The nose depth or height should be more.
I think this is great. I first thought I was looking at a reference photo, not the actual render.
the colors are nice allready! 
the face is looking a liddle bit flat and has also to many sharp edges. on the top of the head you can also see the silhouette of the skull and just some hair coming out of it. sometimes the hairstrands are also too straight i think.
what i would do is this:
the face is looking flat -> try to improve the lightning( for example more from the side)
silhouette of the skull-> you need here and there more hair 
make it fluffy! i think a cats silhouette is just defined by fur.
to make it more fluffy you can also try some deph of field in this shot. anyway its a close up and you would expect that.
ears are not round enough at the top
eyes are good in my opinion.
On the right (our right) you see the hair going straight up from the emitter mesh. Also you see clearly where the emitter mesh ends. This is better solved with several hair systems. First one very short and very compact and irregular in height, and then one larger. This way you never see the emitter mesh shape. Also these hair systems must be combed to avoid the “straight up” that never happens in an animal, it is always combed in an angle.
Also there is a problem as pointed with the proportions of the head, perhaps is a very smart cat? 
(because the brain seems extremely huge compared to the face).
Perhaps is the lens used in the camera and the mesh has not such distortions? Is not much but sufficiently to note something is wrong. Perhaps because in such a close-up our mind expects the nose and mouth of the cat to be bigger in such a close-up. It feels wrong but I don’t know if it is this or what.
Thanks for the pointers guys :yes: The mesh wasn’t quite right. I will try to fix it. The problem is probably made worse by using a long focal length camera and flat lighting.
There are multiple hair systems there. I made the mistake of using them for different areas rather than lengths though. I was pleased with the one on the face but then added another to try to blend this with one on the body and that’s where most of the issues are.
Charblaze is pretty much right. I’d recommend modeling based on the skull.
The texture and colors of hair is great, very impressive. The face of cat isnt right, but hair and eyes are nice.
