When I first bought my Nikon a couple of years ago, first thing I did was set the default exposure to -0.3 and default flash exposure to -0.7, along with using a Neutral profile. Defaults seemed completely unrealistic, but eye-candy pleasing for Internet posting photos.
Nikon’s Matrix metering is good for taking photos of black cats or other black objects, as matrix metering automatically compensates for such lighting abnomalies, rather than using center weighted or spot metering. (Can be worked around by using spot metering, but takes a few more seconds.) Or, if you find yourself always applying a curve within your editor to increase contrast/saturation for bringing-out shadows, etc, Matrix metering also does a pretty good job for sufficing for such a time consuming post processing within your editor.