"The cat who got the cream" is a sort of idiom or expression. To feel like "the cat who got the cream" means to feel good. To me "the cat who got the cream" suggests a cat that STOLE some cream that she wasn't supposed to get, so it means to feel good, perhaps in a mischievous way.
The writer is making a half-joke, a pleasantry, because of a parallel between a real-world situation and the expression.
A similar expression to say that somebody was "smiling like the cat who ate the canary." That definitely means a
_mischievous_ grin.