Interesting post JSL.
CAT scares the hell out of me. I prefer a regular judder rather than nothing followed by a huge drop.
We were flying into San Francisco once, quite low for CAT I must admit, and the plane suddenly dropped about 50 ft. One of the CC was standing next to me and she instinctively looked out of the windows. I later thought that we might have dropped to avoid another aircraft close by.
Even longer ago, I was on a Pan Am 747 flying to LA. This was in the days when the Captain would come out and say hello to the passengers (sometimes all the passengers!). While he was doing his walk around, we hit turbulence. Everybody nearby looked at him for some clues as to how serious it was and he carried on saying "I'm sure they'll be able to manage". I assume that in those days there was still an engineer up front.
Luca