Lets say I have the following 2 HQL's:

FROM Cat c WHERE c.id > :id

This should return me a List with a list with Cat objects right?

Now lets say I have

SELECT c.Name FROM Cat c WHERE c.id > :id

I should recieve a list with Cat objects, but only the Name member is populated.

Correct?

Because what is happening with me is... When I use the select clause, I get a list of straight up Objects. NOT Cat objects... objects of type Object.

You must cast the elements of the returned list to Cat

Query q = session.createQuery("from Cat c....");
List result = q.list();
for (Iterator iter = result.iterator(); iter.hasNext();) {
Cat nextCat = (Cat) iter.next();
// do something...
}

Ya, that is what I thought... but I am getting a ClassCastException

:(

Ofcourse, it isn't a Cat that I am dealing with. But the data I am trying to pull is sensitive. So I can't show it here. :(

they are Strings most likely, I'm guessing the name

In this case hibernate would return a String object not a cat.
Note that if you select more than one property from car you will get back an object array...