Here's my 2c, as a weekend employee of a dedicated camera store in town:
You need to look at the amount of telephoto you think you're going to be happy with. If the 4x (3.8x) zoom on the S95 isn't going to be enough, and it's not going to let you take the photographs that you want to take, then I don't think that it would be the camera for you. The S95 has far and away the best picture quality of any camera that size. It is built well, easy to use, and the autofocus is pretty snappy, but if it doesn't get you as close as you'd like to be to take the photos that you want, then all of that is moot. If you can live without the zoom? The S95 is a great camera.
If you do decide that you'd like a camera with a bit more telephoto than the S95, I'd instead recommend the Panasonic ZS7 (if you can still find one), or the Panasonic ZS10 (the newer one, but not quite as well built as the last one). Nikon makes brilliant SLR cameras, but their P&S cameras are lacking (speaking as someone who is also a Nikon shooter). The two Panasonic cameras I recommended are both higher zoom compact cameras, very similar to the S9100.
Hopefully that helps.
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