This is something that took me a lot of getting used to as well... I've gotten the hang of it now but I still sometimes find myself feeling not entirely in control, though maybe that's part of the fun.
Maybe you could allow the player to point Cereal directly with the arrows/joystick, but still clamp his rotation speed to its current value? That way it's more intuitive to understand how he'll rotate in response to input, but he still needs some time to fully rotate to that direction, and the player still has to think a few steps ahead. Just an idea! I could see that still taking a bit of the challenge out of it too. :)