How do you refer to cats?

[udarnitsa.livejournal.com]

Let’s say you’re walking down the street and see a cat. You want the cat-lover you’re walking with to see it, so you point at it and say, “Look! A cat!” What word do you use? Кот? Кошка? Котик? If you know the sex of a cat, do you automatically use the correct word?

English doesn’t force us to specify gender the way Russian does, so I find this confusing.

Double Letters

[wolfie-18.livejournal.com]

I remember coming across Russian text once, and I came across the odd "жж" word. I tried translating it, and sorry but I can't provide the sentence I found it in because I forgot. What does "жж" mean, exactly?

And on the subject of double letters, words such as более and менее, are those last two e's pronounced as just one e or distinguished e's?

[EDIT]: Forgive me, everyone. I just found the text that I was talking about. Perhaps I was thinking of both ЖЖ and ж at the same time. Here it is:

"Ты сказал мне: "Ну что ж, иди в монастырь
или замуж за дурака..."

It's a line from one of Анна Ахматова's poem: Читая Гамлета