When I called for the rolls you were still sustaining the spell. So even though you the player knows that your character has to make some rolls which have to do with surprise, your character would still be sustaining the spells unless you had IC'd that he dropped them in response to something that's actually IC (i.e. the howl). Even after the howling and the crash of the rock you kicked you specifically said that you were still sustaining the spell so that's gonna count in your rolls.
That just knocks your Init down to 6 and everything else stays the same.
You didn't command your cat Nova to cast Combat Sense so unless you take a free action to command it then it's not cast. Even if it was cast, Nova casts it on itself so you wouldn't benefit from it.
Don't mean to be a stickler but these are important things in strategizing and forgetting to buff up or having a weapon packed away instead of in-hand can be very crucial in combat so I don't want to just hand-wave things that make all the difference in the split second combat of SR.
Things like having a weapon loaded, your typical combat systems engaged, or a focus touching your body i'll hand-wave.....but casting spells or dropping sustained spells I won't.
