Cats… are beautiful, mysterious, and mischievious. They are very independent, yet let you know how much they need you. Sharing your life with a cat has many health benefits as well. A cats purr has the same relaxation benefits as meditation, and petting your cat can reduce stress and lower your risk of a heart attack. Cats make wonderful pets especially to seniors because they are low maintenance and are very easy to care for. Just having a companion around has been proven to increase a persons well being and longevity. We compiled a list of facts about cats. I bet you didn’t know all this and you will find it interesting. Don’t forget to share with your friends.
- Cats make 17 different sounds
- Cats purr when showing deep emotion, that is why cats purr when they are in pain too!
- Cats prefer to lounge up high, that way they can see prey or danger.
- Cats have a keen eyesight in the dark, it is almost like having built in infra red glasses.
- Cats have glands between their eyes and ears that is why they rub up against you when you feed them because they are putting their scent on you.
- The cats back bone is held together with muscles instead of ligaments, which makes the back very flexible.
- A cat has 26 more vertebrae than us humans.
- Cats have 19 million membranes lining their nose (humans only have 5 million!)
- Cats have 30 muscles in each ear, whereas humans only have 5.
- A cat has four rows of whiskers.
- A cat uses his whiskers to determine if a space is too small to squeeze through.
- When your cat brings home a bird or mouse it isn’t because he is hungry, they are giving you a very proud earned trophy.
- Cats can be taught to recognize colors.
- Cat’s urine glows under a black light.
- The heaviest cat ever recorded was 46 lbs.
- Dogs have 42 teeth, cats about 30.
- Cats purr at about 26 cycles per second, the same frequency as an idling diesel engine.
- Cats have a third eyelid called a haw and you will probably only see it when kitty isn’t feeling well.
- 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.
- In 1987 cats overtook dogs as the number one pet in America.
- 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.
- Cats are the only animal that walk on their claws, not the pads of their feet.
- Female fleas consume fifteen times their weight daily.
- The flea can jump 350 times its body length, that is like a human jumping the length of a football field.
- A cat’s tongue consists of small “hooks,” which come in handy when tearing up food.
- When a domestic cat goes after mice, about one pounce in three results in a catch.
- The cat lover is an ailurophile, while a cat hater is an ailurophobe.
- 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.
- 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.
- More than 50 percent of dog and cat owneres give their pets a human name, such as Lucy,Sam or Max.
- Nearly 60% of owners bury their pets on family property when they die; 25 percent have them cremated.
- Domesticated cats are never mentioned in the Bible. Dogs are mentioned 14 times, lions 55 times.
- More than 40% of pet owners talk to their pets on the phone or through an answering machine.
- 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.
- In mythology, the cat is believed to have great influence on the weather. Witches that rode on storms were said to take the form of cats. The dog is a signal of wind, and a dog was an attendant of Odin, the storm king. So cats symbolize down-pouring rain, and dogs symbolize strong gusts of wind. Thats where the saying” It is raining cats and dogs” comes from!
- The cheetah is the only cat in the world that can’t retract it’s claws.
- In ancient Egypt, entire families would shave their eyebrows as a sign of mourning when the family cat died.
- Ancient Egyptians used cats as mice control especially around the grain stores.
- In ancient Egypt, they were worshiped as gods.
- The Egyptians were the first documented people to domesticate the cat.
- Egyptians went into mourning for a cat that died, and would mummify the cats and take them to the temple of the cat god.
- Cats of ancient Egypt lead a pretty good life and have not since then been so highly worshiped.
- From Egypt, traders took the cats to Italy. By the tenth century cats arrived in England.
- During the middle ages in Europe, cats were associated as evil and were often persecuted along with their female owners who were considered witches. Especially the black cats were believed to be incarnations of the devil. It wasn’t until the fourteenth century that cats once again gained favor with people because they helped eliminate the rats that carried the bubonic plague, which killed more than seventy-five million people.
Now the cat is one of the most popular pets in the world and have set a very comfortable life for themselves, yet maintaining their mystery and independence.
I hope you liked this page, so don’t forget to share it with your friends, they will thank you.
