How the hell do you make pix of a coal black cat? Results look like a boring Rorshack test.

Try a shaded concrete drive. That works best for me.

Use white film

If you want to take some sort of posed shot I would suggest a neutral gray background (of a kind that won't reflect highlights), shoot in RAW format with no flash, only diffuse light such as near a window in the late afternoon, overexpose the shot and then bring it back to correct exposure during post-processing to avoid clipping at the low end and ending up with a black hole.