(author of bat here)

Exactly. Drop-in compatibility with 'cat' is one of the goals of bat (see https://github.com/sharkdp/bat#project-goals-and-alternative... and a list of alternatives here: https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/blob/master/doc/alternatives....).

Another thing that I use frequently is previewing a whole set of files in a single (pager) output. Something like

    bat src/*.cpp

This also allows you to easily search across a whole set of open files.