That's a shame, really. Now your dwarves have fewer reasons to tantrum.
By the way, since IIRC cats lack [LARGE_ROAMING], all you'd have to do is remove [COMMON_DOMESTIC] to fix the problem. Note that this is only true prior to world generation.
If you've already generated a world, the only way to remove cats entirely is to tweak their temperature settings. There are several effective ways of killing them, too. You can use [HEATDAM_POINT:1], [COLDDAM_POINT:65534], [MELTING_POINT:1], [BOILING_POINT:1], [IGNITE_POINT:1] (this is dangerous, of course), [FIXED_TEMP:<insert something fatal but not too extreme -- it can be bad for your dwarves if it's too nasty>], or maybe [HOMEOTHERM:<as with FIXED_TEMP>]. I recommend the HEATDAM or COLDDAM options, personally. The others carry some risk. Boiling at a low temperature may create clouds of icy death that can annihilate dwarves instantly. If you add [SEVERONBREAKS] (or whatever it's called -- check the Bronze Colossus in creature_default.txt), the HEATDAM and COLDDAMN methods should lead to exploding cats. If you use IGNITE and SEVER, you get the infamous
nuclear catsplosion.
Hypothesis: teleporting fireballs, except outdoors in winter in cold biomes. Must test.
Vermin ignore temperature, so this won't work. Their temp settings can affect other creatures (e.g. fire snakes can burn things), but they remain unaffected.
Also, only traders are lobotomized due to vermin hunting. At least that's how I remember it working. Everything worked perfectly except the dwarven caravan refused to leave. Well, I guess I never paid attention to some of the less common job types (e.g. liaison meetings, the leader/mayor consoling upset dwarves, &c).