Yeah, “we’ve spared no expense” is a dramatically ironic line in the book, because the reader sees Hammond cutting costs at every single opportunity. Every single time Hammond drops that line, it’s almost immediately preceded or followed by an example of him cutting corners to save money.
Book Hammond is sort of a cross between Trump and Musk. He takes all of the worst techbro “I want to sound smart by telling people I’m an engineer, but I’m actually an idiot with zero engineering education. But I hold the purse strings so I can tell the engineers how to do their jobs” aspects of Musk, and combines it with Trump’s infamous “do it my way (as cheaply as possible; we won’t even pay a lot of the people who worked on it) or you’re fired” business attitude. The man is a bully who threatens to ruin anyone that doesn’t go along with him.
Nedry was a good example of that. Nedry had to bid on the contract basically blind, because they wouldn’t tell him anything about the project until after he won the contract and signed an NDA. They just told him it was a basic database management program, so he bid the job as such. All of the park automation stuff was revealed after he won the contract. And Hammond basically pulled a Vader “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it further.”
IIRC, the reason lots of old paintings gave cats weird faces was because the artist was trying to indicate that the cats are mischievous. Basically, dogs got painted accurately because they follow directions. But cats got painted like jesters on purpose, because they just do whatever the hell they want to do; fuck your rules, fuck your family’s nice dishes I’m knocking this shit off the shelf, feed me and tell me I’m pretty while I bite you for scratching my back wrong.
The weird faces are symbolic, and the audience at the time would have recognized the symbolism. Cats were also heavily associated with witchcraft and paganism, so it could also be used to symbolize that link. Like if a cat is painted looking demonic and/or standing on two feet, it could be possessed by a spirit.