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Cat behaviors, although bizarre, have
explanations behind them. When a cat rubs against you with his
face, he is marking you with his scent, claiming you as his very
own.
Research shows that people who own cats and other
pets tend to live longer lives and experience less
stress.
When cats raise their backs to human touch, they
are revealing their mutual affection.
A cat and her offspring can produce 420,000
kittens in seven years.
95% of cat owners admit they talk to their
cats.
A cat can be either right-pawed or
left-pawed.
A cat can jump as much as seven times its
height.
A cat cannot see directly under its nose. This is
why the cat cannot seem to find tidbits on the floor.
A cat has 230 bones in its body. A human only has
206 bones.
A cat has four rows of whiskers.
A cat in a hurry can sprint at about thirty-one
miles per hour.
A cat sees about six times better than a human at
night because of the tapetum lucidum , a layer of extra reflecting
cells which absorb light.
A cat uses its whiskers to determine if a space
is too small to squeeze through. The whiskers act as feelers or
antennae, helping the animal to judge the precise width of any
passage.
A cat will almost never meow at another cat. Cats
use this sound for humans.
A cat will clean itself with paw and tongue after
a dangerous experience or when it has fought with another cat. This
is believed to be an attempt by the animal to soothe its nerves by
doing something natural and instinctive.
A cat will never break a sweat because it has no
sweat glands.
A cat will spend nearly 30% of its life grooming
itself.
A cat's arching back is part of a complex body
language system, usually associated with feeling threatened. The
arch is able to get so high because the cat's spine contains nearly
60 vertebrae which fit loosely together. Humans have only 34
vertebrae.
A cat's brain is more similar to a human's brain
than that of a dog.
A cat's ear pivots 180 degrees.
A cat's hearing rates as one of the top in the
animal kingdom. Cats can hear sounds as high-pitched as 65 kHz; a
human's hearing stops at just 20 kHz.
A cat's heart beats at 110 to 140 beats per
minute, twice as fast as a human heart.
A cat's jaws cannot move sideways.
A cat's normal body temperature is 101.5 degrees
F (38.6 C).
A cat's sense of taste is keener than a dog's
sense of taste.
A cat's tail held high means happiness. A
twitching tail is a warning sign, and a tail tucked in close to the
body is a sure sign of insecurity.
A cat's tail plays a vital part in the cat's
balance and in the "righting reflex" that allows it to land on its
feet after falling from a height.
A cat's tongue is scratchy because it's lined
with papillae-tiny elevated backwards hooks that help to hold prey
in place.
A cat's whiskers, called vibrissae, grow on the
cat's face and on the back of its forelegs. The whiskers are
thought to be a kind of sensor to help a cat gauge the space it
wants to go through.
A female cat can begin mating when she is between
5 and 9 months old.
A fifteen year old cat has probably spent ten
years of its life sleeping.
A group of adult cats is called a
clowder.
A group of kittens is called a kindle.
A large majority of white cats with blue eyes are
deaf. White cats with only one blue eye are deaf only in the ear
closest to the blue eye.
A male cat can begin mating when he is between 7
and 10 months old.
A polecat is not a cat. It is a nocturnal
European weasel.
A quarter of cat owners blow dry their cats after
bathing them.
Abraham Lincoln loved cats. He had four of them
while he lived in the White House. Abraham Lincoln's cat, Tabby,
was the first of several White House cats.
According to one legend, the "M" marking on the
forehead of the Tabby Cat was created by the prophet Mohammed as he
rested his hand lightly on the brow of his favorite cat, a
Tabby.
Adult cats with no health problems are in deep
sleep 15 percent of their lives. They are in light sleep 50 percent
of the time.
After being handled, cats lick themselves to smooth their
fur and get rid of the "human" smell. Licking is also thought to
produce a calming effect.
Ailurophobia is the fear of cats. Julius Caesar,
Henry II, Charles XI, and Napoleon all suffered from this and would
nearly faint in the presence of a cat.
All cats are born with blue eyes.
All cats are members of the family Felidea.
Interestingly enough, the cat family split from the other mammals
at least 40,000,000 years ago, making them one of the oldest
mammalian families.
Americans spend more on cat food than on baby
food.
Americans spend more than 5.4 billion dollars on
their pets each year.
An adult cat has thirty teeth and around twelve
whiskers.
At night a cat can gather into the extra-large
corneas and lenses of its eyes more than six times the amount of
light than humans can. Seeing far better than humans do at night
time and tending to focus best at a distance of eight to twenty
feet makes cats excellent night time hunters.
Black cat superstitions originated in America. In
Asia and England, a black cat is considered lucky.
Both humans and cats have identical regions in
the brain responsible for emotion.
Calico cats are nearly always female.
Cat families usually play best in even numbers.
Cats and kittens should be acquired in pairs whenever
possible.
Cat scratch disease, a benign but sometimes
painful disease of short duration, is caused by a bacillus. Despite
its name, the disease can be transmitted by many kinds of scratches
besides those of cats.
Cat urine glows under a black light.
Catnip can affect lions and tigers as well as
house cats. It excites them because it contains a chemical that
resembles an excretion of the dominant female's urine.
Cats are attracted to automobile antifreeze
because of its sweet taste.
Cats are sometimes born with extra toes. This is
called polydactyl.
Cats are the only domestic animals that walk
directly on their claws, not on their paws. This method of walking
is called "digitigrade." When cats scratch furniture, it isn't an
act of malice. They are actually tearing off the ragged edges of
the sheaths of their talons to expose the new sharp ones
beneath.
Cats bury their feces to cover their trails from
predators.
Cats can donate blood to other cats.
Cats can get "age spots". These are black spots
on the skin that are often seen around the lips, eyes, and nose;
and usually start when the cat is three to five years of
age.
Cats can get bored. They show their boredom by
excessive licking, chewing, or biting.
Cats can have freckles. They can appear anywhere
on a cat's skin and even in its mouth.
Cats can learn tricks. They just sometimes choose
not to.
Cats can see color. Studies have shown that cats
can distinguish between red and green; red and blue; red and gray;
green and blue; green and gray; blue and gray; yellow and blue, and
yellow and gray.
Cats can see up to 120 feet away. Their
peripheral vision is about 285 degrees.
Cats have 13 ribs.
Cats have a homing ability that uses its
biological clock, the angle of the sun, and the Earth's magnetic
field.
Cats have a third eyelid, called a haw, that is
rarely visible. If it can be seen, it could be an indication of ill
health.
Cats have AB blood groups just like
people.
Cats have about 100 different vocalization
sounds. In comparison, dogs have about 10.
Cats have amazing hearing ability. A cat's ear
has 30 muscles that control the outer ear (by comparison, human
ears only have six muscles). These muscles rotate 180 degrees, so
the cat can hear in all directions without moving its
head.
Cats have better memories than dogs. Tests
conducted by the University of Michigan concluded that while a dogs
memory lasts no more than 5 minutes, a cat's can last as long as 16
hours - exceeding even that of monkeys and orangutans.
Cats have carpal pads on their front paws that
help to prevent them from sliding on a slippery surface when
jumping.
Cats have true fur, meaning that they have both
an undercoat and an outer coat.
Cats lack a true collarbone and can generally
squeeze their bodies through any space they can get their heads
through.
Cats love to hear the sound of their own name and
your voice, so talk to them often.
Cats must have fat in their diet, because they
can't produce it on their own. Never feed your cat dog food,
because cats need five times more protein than dogs do.
Cats only need a sixth the amount of light that
humans do to see. However, their daytime vision is only fair
compared to that of humans.
Cats purr at about 26 cycles per second, the same
frequency as an idling diesel engine.
Cats scratch to shed the sheaths of their old
claws.
Cats step with both left legs, then both right
legs when they walk or run. The only other animals to do this are
the giraffe and the camel.
Cats use more than 500 muscles to leap, jump, and
sprint.
Cats with white fur and skin on their ears are
very prone to sunburn.
Cats, not dogs, are the most common pets in
America. There are approximately 66 million cats to 58 million
dogs, with Parakeets a distant third at 14 million.
Despite its reputation for being finicky, the
average cat consumes about 127,750 calories a year, nearly 28 times
its own weight in food and the same amount again in liquids. In
case you were wondering, cats cannot survive on a vegetarian
diet.
Each day in the US, animal shelters are forced to
destroy 30,000 dogs and cats.
Ear furnishings are the hairs that grow inside a
cat's ears.
Ernest Hemingway once had some 30 cats at his
home in Havana.
Felix the Cat is the first cartoon character to
ever have been made into a balloon for a parade.
Human painkillers such acetaminophen (Tylenol)
are toxic to cats. Chocolate is also poisonous to cats.
If left to her own devices, a female cat may have
three to seven kittens every four months. This is why population
control using spaying and neutering is so important.
If your cat is in the habit of rolling over and
exposing his stomach, you can be sure he feels perfectly safe with
you. It's also a way of demonstrating his pleasure in your
company.
In 1888, an estimated 300,000 mummified cats were
found at Beni Hassan, Egypt. They were sold at $18.43 per ton, and
shipped to England to be ground up and used for
fertilizer.
In addition to using their noses, cats can smell
with the Jacobson's organ which is located in the upper surface of
the mouth.
In ancient Egypt, the entire family would shave
their eyebrows off as a sign of mourning when the family cat
died.
In cats, the calico and tortoiseshell coats are
sex-linked traits. All cats displaying these coats are female... or
occasionally sterile males.
In general, cats live longer than most dogs. An
average life span might be 12 to 14 years. Some cats are reaching
20 or more. A cat's longevity depends on feeding, genetics,
environment, veterinary care and some other factors. It is also
important whether or not the cat lives indoors or is allowed
outdoors (outdoor cats live an average of eight years). The general
consensus is that at about age seven the cat can be considered as
"middle-aged", and at age 10 and beyond - old.
In relation to their body size, cats have the
largest eyes of any mammal.
In the 9th century, King Henry I of Saxony
decreed that the fine for killing a cat should be sixty bushels of
corn.
In the midst of building the Grand Coulee Dam in
the state of Washington, engineers were stymied by the problem of
threading a cable through a pipeline until an anonymous cat saved
the day. Harnessed to the cable, this unknown hero crawled through
the pipeline maze to successfully finish the job.
It has been established that people who own pets
live longer, have less stress, and have fewer heart
attacks.
It has been scientifically proven that stroking a
cat can lower one's blood pressure.
Many cats are unable to properly digest cow's
milk. Milk and milk products give them diarrhea.
More than 30 percent of American households have
a cat as part of the family
Morris, the 9-Lives cat, was discovered at an
animal shelter in New England.
Most cats have five toes on each front paw, but
only four toes on each back paw.
Neutering a cat extends its life span by two or
three years.
Never pick a kitten up by the neck. Only a mother
cat may do this safely.
Newborn kittens have closed ear canals that don't
begin to open for nine days.
One litter box per cat, plus an extra box, is the
best formula for a multi-cat household.
Orange and lemon rinds are offensive to cats. A
light rubbing of orange peel on furniture will discourage your cat
from using it as a scratching post.
People who are allergic to cats are actually
allergic to cat saliva or cat dander. If the cat is bathed
regularly, allergic people have better tolerance to it.
Purring is part of every cat's repertoire of
social communication, apparently created by the movement of air in
spasms through contractions of the diaphragm. Interestingly,
purring is sometimes heard in cats who are severely ill or anxious,
perhaps as a self-comforting vocalization. But, more typically, it
is a sign of contentment, first heard in kittens as they suckle
milk from their mother.
Sir Isaac Newton, who first described the
principle of gravity, also invented the swinging cat door for the
convenience of his many cats.
The ancestor of all domestic cats is the African
Wild Cat, which still exists today.
The average canned or dry cat meal is the
nutritional equivalent of eating five mice.
The cat family split from the other mammals at
least 40 million years ago, making them one of the oldest mammalian
families.
The cat lover is an ailurophile, while a cat
hater is an ailurophobe.
The catgut formerly used as strings in tennis
rackets and musical instruments does not come from cats. Catgut
actually comes from sheep, hogs, and horses.
The cheetah is the only cat in the world that
can't retract its claws.
The color of the points in Siamese cats is heat
related. Cool areas are darker. In fact, Siamese kittens are born
white because of the heat inside the mother's uterus before birth.
This heat keeps the kittens hair from darkening on the
points.
The declawing of a pet cat involves surgery
called an onychectomy, in which the entire claw and end bone of
each toe of the animal are amputated.
The different types of tabby patterns that are
seen in domestic cats also occur in wild cats.
The domestic cat is the only cat species able to
hold its tail vertically while walking. All wild cats hold their
tails horizontally or tucked between their legs while walking. A
tail held high means happiness; a twitching tail is a warning sign;
and a tucked tail is a sign of insecurity.
The only domestic animal not mentioned in the
Bible is the cat.
The penalty for killing a cat, 4,000 years ago in
Egypt, was death.
The phenomenon of cats finding their owners in a
place where they have never been before is scientifically known as
Psi-trailing. Many well-documented stories tell of cats that have
walked hundreds, even thousands of miles to find their
owners.
The phrase "raining cats and dogs" originated in
17th Century England. During heavy downpours of rain, many of these
poor animals unfortunately drowned and their bodies would be seen
floating in the rain torrents that raced through the streets. The
situation gave the appearance that it had literally rained "cats
and dogs" and led to the current expression.
There are more than 100 million dogs and cats in
the United States.
There are more than 500 million domestic cats,
with either 35 different breeds (according to The Cat Fanciers
Association, the world's largest cat registry), or 38 breeds (as
recognized by The International Cat Association, the second largest
registry).
Those dark lines connecting to a cat's eyes are
called mascara lines.
To drink, a cat laps liquid from the underside of
its tongue, rather than the top.
When you find your cat glued to the window
intently watching a bird, making a strange chattering noise and
clicking his or her jaws oddly, your cat is merely acting on
instinct. What your cat is doing is directly related to the killing
bite that all cats (both domestic and wild cats) use to dispatch
their prey.
You can tell a cat's mood by looking into its
eyes. A frightened or excited cat will have large, round pupils. An
angry cat will have narrow pupils. The pupil size is related as
much to the cat's emotions as to the degree of light.
Young cats can distinguish between two identical
sounds that are just 18 inches apart at a distance of up to 60
feet.
