After the new talent trees for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion came out, it's become quite the opinion that Feral is the "lamest" of the three druid trees in the sense that Balance and Restoration got awesome talent additions while Feral didn't impress that much. As if that wasn't bad enough, feral druids were hit with some bad news once again! Blizzard poster Koraa gives the latest word about the mysterious Dire Cat form that was announced in the World Wide Invitational (WWI) a while back.
We have no plans to implement a "Dire Cat" form at this time. "Dire Bear" exists for the sole purpose of upgrading the Feral Druid's armor value to match the Warrior/Paladin etc. (Druids get no shield)
We do, however, intend to allow Druids to be able to use items and enchants with procs in forms, which I believe will work in the next beta build (don't hold me to it though).
I think what Kalgan meant was that we intend to do different texture variances for Druid forms, including Cat form. Which is true, though not sure how soon we're going to get that. They may come from a repeatable quest, or through inscription.
Source
While this affects all druids, this obviously affects feral druids the most who were expecting it to an improvement over the current cat form mechanics. Of course since it was so mysterious, there really isn't much of a surprise that all cat form is getting is an aesthetic change.