Sorry, I haven't waded through all 5 pages of this thread, but as someone who's heated with a catalytic stove for over 20 years (a Dutchwest and more recently a BlazeKing), I think it's absurd not to get one because of the "maintenance and cost" of the catalytic converter. No maintenance or cost is required, other than replacing it every 5-10 years; it's money well spent and a less than one hour job. In daily operation, it's opening the bypass to reload the stove and/or build a new fire, and closing it again once the fire is going good. With a BK, this is two lever activations every 12 hours or so on a slow burn, perhaps every 4 hours with a raging burn. Oh, and you need to remember to not put stupid stuff like pressure-treated or painted wood into the thing - which you shouldn't be doing anyhow, if you care about the air quality around your house and in the world.
By contrast, you want to talk about babysitting, with a non-cat secondary burn you have to make sure the secondary burn stuff gets to roughly double the temperature of a cat in order to get decent secondary combustion (1000 versus 500 degrees), and if you let the thing burn too low, the secondary combustion goes bye-bye and you just have a smoke-dragon with halved heat output. OK ... I will admit my characterization of the non-cat MAY be as biased and exaggerated as the characterization of the cat under which you are laboring, and I am prepared to be corrected ...