"Cat red" makes Japanese sounds way more vague than it really is, you're just not bothering to attempt to transliterate the grammar structures because it's too hard for English speakers to understand without a half-hour lecture.

It's "Cat (topic marker) red (basic copula)", which obviously carries a lot more information than just "cat red" to a person who intuitively understands what those weird grammar markers signify

Japanese not having articles is just as weird as PIE languages not having things like topic markers.