Yup, that was a sweet story. Sort of "Watership Down" with cats.
I nearly cried three times reading Otherland, though, and for me that's saying a lot. The fourth book, when it came out, was 900 pages; I had to sit in the bookstore for eight hours to read the first 700 pages (I had no money) to make sure that my favorite character wasn't really-truly dead.
I got through the first two but then lost track of the series. Same can be said of Brin's "Uplift" series, which was also very good. Kind of operatic.