"Wait, what? I thought we were supposed to be taking photos in bright light! This is bogus! You're right, it is bogus. Your device is doing its best to balance the varying levels of exposure, but only knows how to pick one. You can properly expose your cat, leading to extreme highlights coming from the window. Or you can properly expose the outdoors, rendering your cat as a shadowy blob. The easiest thing to do in this instance is to change our angle of approach so that we're not shooting directly into the window and light source, but from the side. A good rule of thumb is never to shoot into a subject that is eclipsing your main light source."
Image Source: Andrew Marttila