an update
Just an update, I worried for no reason at all. At JFK we had British Airways (Cathay is at their counter) check us in and they asked us if we wanted our bags to arive directly to our final destination. They tagged them with DPS (Bali) tags and we saw them come off in the Bali airport from the bag line. 20 hour lay over in HKG went off without a hitch.
Cheers,
PedroNY