My experience: Same (pile of updates, lengthyish reconfig on next restart)
No cat. Some things are a little....hinky....but I do have cursor et al. Google chrome (browser seems to work a little worse, IE (which I never use except for this test) works better but I still hate it and now hate it slightly more.
Just giving you some color; I have no fix suggestions.
Do a System Restore to a time before the updates. (Windows creates a restore point before doing updates so use this)
Install the updates one by one until the system behaves incorrectly. It is probably one of the .NET framework updates.