Feline Fun Facts
1. Every year, nearly four million cats are eaten in
Asia.
2. On average, cats spend 2/3 of every day sleeping. That means a
nine-year-old cat has been awake for only three years of its
life.
3. Unlike dogs, cats do not have a sweet tooth. Scientists
believe this is due to a mutation in a key taste
receptor.
4. When a car chases its prey, it keeps its head level. Dogs and
humans bob their heads up and down.
5. The technical term for a cat’s hairball is a
“bezoar.”
6. A group of cats is called a
“chowder.”
7. Female cats tend to be right pawed, while male cats are more
often left pawed. Interestingly, while 90% of humans are right handed, the
remaining 10% of lefties also tend to be
male.
8. A cat can’t climb head first down a tree because every claw on
a cat’s paw points the same way. To get down from a tree, a cat must back
down.
9. Cats make about 100 different sounds. Dogs make only about
10.i
10. A cat’s brain is biologically more similar to a human brain
than it is to a dog’s. Both humans and cats have identical regions in their
brains that are responsible for
emotions.
11. There are more than 500 million domestic cats in the world,
with approximately 40 recognized
breeds.
12. Approximately 24 cat skins can make a
coat.
13. While it is commonly thought that the ancient Egyptians were
the first to domesticate cats, the oldest known pet cat was recently found in a
9,500-year-old grave on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. This grave predates
early Egyptian art depicting cats by 4,000 years or
more.
14. During the time of the Spanish Inquisition, Pope Innocent
VIII condemned cats as evil and thousands of cats were burned. Unfortunately,
the widespread killing of cats led to an explosion of the rat population, which
exacerbated the effects of the Black
Death.
15. During the middle Ages, cats were associated with witchcraft,
and on St. John’s Day, people all over Europe would stuff them into sacks and
toss the cats into bonfires. On holy days, people celebrated by tossing cats
from church towers.
16. Cats are North America’s most popular pets: there are 73
million cats compared to 63 million dogs. Over 30% of households in North
America own a cat.
17. The first cat in space was a French cat named Felicette
(a.k.a. “Astrocat”) in 1963; France blasted the cat into outer space.
Electrodes implanted in her brains sent neurological signals back to Earth. She
survived the trip.
18. The group of words associated with cat (catt, cath, chat,
katze) stem from the Latin catus, meaning domestic cat, as opposed to feles, or
wild cat.
19 .The term “puss” is the root of the principal word for“cat” in
the Romanian term pisica and the root of secondary words in Lithuanian (puz) and
Low German puus. Some scholars suggest that “puss” could be imitative of the
hissing sound used to get a cat’s attention. As a slang word for the female
pudenda, it could be associated with the connotation of a cat being soft, warm,
and fuzzy.
20. Approximately 40,000 people are bitten by cats in the U.S.
annually.
21. According to Hebrew legend, Noah prayed to God for help
protecting all the food he stored on the ark from being eaten by rats. In
reply, God made the lion sneeze, and out popped a
cat.
22. A cat’s hearing is better than a dog’s. And a cat can hear
high-frequency sounds up to two octaves higher than a
human.
23. A cat can travel at a top speed of approximately 31 mph (49
km) over a short distance.
24. A cat can jump up to five times its own height in a single
bound.
25. Some cats have survived falls of over 65 feet (20 meters),
due largely to their “righting reflex.” The eyes and balance organs in the inner
ear tell it where it is in space so the cat can land on its feet. Even cats
without a tail have this ability.
26. A cat rubs against people not only to be affectionate but
also to mark out its territory with scent glands around its face. The tail area
and paws also carry the cat’s scent.
27. Researchers are unsure exactly how a cat purrs. Most
veterinarians believe that a cat purrs by vibrating vocal folds deep in the
throat. To do this, a muscle in the larynx opens and closes the air passage
about 25 times per second.
28. When a family cat died in ancient Egypt, family members would
mourn by shaving off their eyebrows. They also held elaborate funerals during
which they drank wine and beat their breasts. The cat was embalmed with a
sculpted wooden mask and the tiny mummy was placed in the family tomb or in a
pet cemetery with tiny mummies of
mice.
29. In 1888, more than 300,000 mummified cats were found an
Egyptian cemetery. They were stripped of their wrappings and carted off to be
used by farmers in England and the U.S. for
fertilizer.
30. Most cats give birth to a litter of between one and nine
kittens. The largest known litter ever produced was 19 kittens, of which 15
survived.
31. Smuggling a cat out of ancient Egypt was punishable by death.
Phoenician traders eventually succeeded in smuggling felines, which they sold
to rich people in Athens and other important
cities.
32. The earliest ancestor of the modern cat lived about 30
million years ago. Scientists called it the Proailurus, which means “first cat”
in Greek. The group of animals that pet cats belong to emerged around 12 million
years ago.
33. The biggest wildcat today is the Siberian Tiger. It can be
more than 12 feet (3.6 m) long (about the size of a small car) and weigh up to
700 pounds (317 kg).a
34. The smallest wildcat today is the Black-footed cat. The
females are less than 20 inches (50 cm) long and can weigh as little as 2.5
lbs. (1.2 kg).a
35. Many Egyptians worshipped the goddess Bast, who had a woman’s
body and a cat’s head.i
36. Mohammed loved cats and reportedly his favorite cat, Muezza,
was a tabby. Legend says that tabby cats have an “M” for Mohammed on top of
their heads because Mohammad would often rest his hand on the cat’s
head.i
37. While many parts of Europe and North America consider the
black cat a sign of bad luck, in Britain and Australia, black cats are
considered lucky.g
38. The most popular pedigreed cat is the Persian cat, followed
by the Main Coon cat and the Siamese
cat.
39. The smallest pedigreed cat is a Singapura, which can weigh
just 4 lbs. (1.8 kg), or about five large cans of cat food. The largest
pedigreed cats are Maine Coon cats, which can weigh 25 lbs. (11.3 kg), or
nearly twice as much as an average cat
weighs.
40. Some Siamese cats appear cross-eyed because the nerves from
the left side of the brain go to mostly the right eye and the nerves from the
right side of the brain go mostly to the left eye. This causes some double
vision, which the cat tries to correct by “crossing” its
eyes.
41. Researchers believe the word “tabby” comes from Attabiyah, a
neighborhood in Baghdad, Iraq. Tabbies got their name because their striped
coats resembled the famous wavy patterns in the silk produced in this
city.
42. Cats hate the water because their fur does not insulate well
when it’s wet. The Turkish Van, however, is one cat that likes swimming. Bred in
central Asia, its coat has a unique texture that makes it water
resistant.
43. The Egyptian Mau is probably the oldest breed of cat. In
fact, the breed is so ancient that its name is the Egyptian word for
“cat.”
44. The costliest cat ever is named Little Nicky, who cost his
owner $50,000. He is a clone of an older
cat.
45. A cat usually has about 12 whiskers on each side of its
face.
46. A cat’s eyesight is both better and worse than humans. It is
better because cats can see in much dimmer light and they have a wider
peripheral view. It’s worse because they don’t see color as well as humans do.
Scientists believe grass appears red to
cats.
47. Spanish-Jewish folklore recounts that Adam’s first wife,
Lilith, became a black vampire cat, sucking the blood from sleeping babies.
This may be the root of the superstition that a cat will smother a sleeping
baby or suck out the child’s breath.
48. Perhaps the most famous comic cat is the Cheshire Cat in
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. With the ability to disappear, this
mysterious character embodies the magic and sorcery historically associated
with cats.
49. In the original Italian version of Cinderella, the benevolent
fairy godmother figure was a cat.
50. In Holland’s embassy in Moscow, Russia, the staff noticed
that the two Siamese cats kept meowing and clawing at the walls of the building.
Their owners finally investigated, thinking they would find mice. Instead, they
discovered microphones hidden by Russian spies. The cats heard the microphones
when they turned on.
51. The little tufts of hair in a cat’s ear that help keep out
dirt direct sounds into the ear, and insulate the ears are called “ear
furnishings.”
52. The ability of a cat to find its way home is called
“psi-traveling.” Experts think cats either use the angle of the sunlight to find
their way or that cats have magnetized cells in their brains that act as
compasses.
53. Isaac Newton invented the cat flap. Newton was experimenting
in a pitch-black room. Spithead, one of his cats, kept opening the door and
wrecking his experiment. The cat flap kept both Newton and Spithead
happy.
54. The world’s rarest coffee, Kopi Luwak, comes from Indonesia
where a wildcat known as the Luwak lives. The cat eats coffee berries and the
coffee beans inside pass through the stomach. The beans are harvested from the
cat's dung heaps and then cleaned and roasted. Kopi Luwak sells for about $500
for a 450 g (1 lb.) bag.
55. A cat’s jaw can’t move sideways, so a cat can’t chew large
chunks of food.
56. A cat almost never meows at another cat, mostly just humans.
Cats typically will spit, purr, and hiss at other
cats.
57. A cat’s back is extremely flexible because it has up to 53
loosely fitting vertebrae. Humans only have
34.d
58. Many cat owners think their cats can read their minds.
Approximately 1/3 of cat owners think their pets are able to read their
minds.
59. All cats have claws, and all except the cheetah sheath them
when at rest.
60. Two members of the cat family are distinct from all others:
the clouded leopard and the cheetah. The clouded leopard does not roar like
other big cats, nor does it groom or rest like small cats. The cheetah is unique
because it is a running cat; all others are leaping cats. They are leaping cats
because they slowly stalk their prey and then leap on
it.
61. A cat lover is called an Ailurophile (Greek: cat +
lover).g
62. In Japan, cats are thought to have the power to turn into
super spirits when they die. This may be because according to the Buddhist
religion, the body of the cat is the temporary resting place of very spiritual
people.
63. Most cats had short hair until about 100 years ago, when it
became fashionable to own cats and experiment with
breeding.
64. Cats have 32 muscles that control the outer ear (humans have
only 6). A cat can independently rotate its ears 180
degrees.
65. During the nearly 18 hours a day that kittens sleep, an
important growth hormone is released. One reason that kittens sleep so much is
because a growth hormone is released only during
sleep.
66. Cats have about 130,000 hairs per square inch (20,155 hairs
per square centimeter).
67. The heaviest cat on record is Himmy, a Tabby from Queensland,
Australia. He weighed nearly 47 pounds (21 kg). He died at the age of
10.c
68. The oldest cat on record was Crème Puff from Austin, Texas,
who lived from 1967 to August 6, 2005, three days after her 38th birthday. A cat
typically can live up to 20 years, which is equivalent to about 96 human
years.
69. The lightest cat on record is a blue point Himalayan called
Tinker Toy, who weighed 1 pound, 6 ounces (616 g). Tinker Toy was 2.75 inches (7
cm) tall and 7.5 inches (19 cm) long.
70. The tiniest cat on record is Mr. Pebbles, a 2-year-old cat
that weighed 3 lbs. (1.3 k) and was 6.1 inches (15.5 cm)
high.
71. A commemorative tower was built in Scotland for a cat named
Towser, who caught nearly 30,000 mice in her
lifetime.
72. In the 1750s, Europeans introduced cats into the Americas to
control pests.
73. The first cat show was organized in 1871 in London. Cat shows
later became a worldwide craze.
74. The first cartoon cat was Felix the Cat in 1919. In 1940, Tom
and Jerry starred in the first theatrical cartoon “Puss Gets the Boot.” In 1981
Andrew Lloyd Weber created the musical Cats, based on T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s
Book of Practical Cats.
75. The normal body temperature of a cat is between 100.5 ° and
102.5 °F. A cat is sick if its temperature goes below 100 ° or above 103
°F.
76. A cat has 230 bones in its body. A human has 206. A cat has
no collarbone, so it can fit through any opening the size of its
head.
77. A cat’s nose pad is ridged with a unique pattern, just like
the fingerprint of a human.d
78. If they have ample water, cats can tolerate temperatures up
to 133 °F.g
79. Foods that should not be given to cats include onions,
garlic, green tomatoes, raw potatoes, chocolate, grapes, and raisins. Though
milk is not toxic, it can cause an upset stomach and gas. Tylenol and aspirin
are extremely toxic to cats, as are many common houseplants. Feeding a cat dog
food or canned tuna that's for human consumption can cause
malnutrition.
80. A 2007 Gallup poll revealed that both men and women were
equally likely to own a cat.
81. A cat’s heart beats nearly twice as fast as a human heart, at
110 to 140 beats a minute.
82. Cat’s sweat only through their paws. Cats don’t have sweat
glands over their bodies like humans do. Instead, they sweat only through their
paws.
83. In just seven years, a single pair of cats and their
offspring could produce a staggering total of 420,000
kittens.
84. Relative to its body size, the clouded leopard has the
biggest canines of all animals' canines. Its dagger-like teeth can be as long
as 1.8 inches (4.5 cm).a
85. Cats spend nearly 1/3 of their waking hours cleaning
themselves.
86. Grown cats have 30 teeth. Kittens have about 26 temporary
teeth, which they lose when they are about 6 months
old.
87. A cat called Dusty has the known record for the most kittens.
She had more than 420 kittens in her
lifetime.
88. The largest cat breed is the Ragdoll. Male Ragdolls weigh
between 12 and 20 lbs. (5.4-9.0 k). Females weigh between 10 and 15 lbs.
(4.5-6.8 k).c
89. Cats are extremely sensitive to vibrations. Cats are said to
detect earthquake tremors 10 or 15 minutes before humans
can.
90. In contrast to dogs, cats have not undergone major changes
during their domestication process.
91. A female cat is called a queen or a
molly.
92. In the 1930s, two Russian biologists discovered that color
change in Siamese kittens depend on their body temperature. Siamese cats carry
albino genes that work only when the body temperature is above 98° F. If these
kittens are left in a very warm room, their points won’t darken and they will
stay a creamy white.
93. There are up to 60 million feral cats in the United States
alone.
94. The oldest cat to give birth was Kitty who, at the age of 30,
gave birth to two kittens. During her life, she gave birth to 218
kittens.
95. the most traveled cat is Hamlet, who escaped from his carrier
while on a flight. He hid for seven weeks behind a pane. By the time he was
discovered, he had traveled nearly 373,000 miles (600,000
km).c
96. The most expensive cat was an Asian Leopard cat
(ALC)-Domestic Shorthair (DSH) hybrid named Zeus. Zeus, who is 90% ALC and 10%
DSH, has an asking price of £100,000
($154,000).c
97. The cat who holds the record for the longest non-fatal fall
is Andy. He fell from the 16th floor of an apartment building (about 200 ft.
/.06 km) and survived.
98. The richest cat is Blackie who was left £15 million by his
owner, Ben Rea.
99. The claws on the cat’s back paws aren’t as sharp as the claws
on the front paws because the claws in the back don’t retract and, consequently,
become worn.