Hunters had great utility compared to other specs back in cata. I remember nice old silencing shot…
I also liked being able to melee\range on MM and forced you to be good at kiting. I would play cata again if i had a toon leveled up for it just to play MM hunter again.
Pet wise, from memory pets kinda OP in cata for MM in terms of the monkey throwing poop at people and ccing them from memory its been a while though. Not a huge fan of the pet management on MM but it was required for CC back then just not as much as pet is required nowadays.