CATS ON TUESDAY # 3

CATS ON TUESDAY

A BIT OF (WELL ... A LOT OF !!) CAT TRIVIA ...

• 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 frightened cat can run at speeds of up to 31 mph, slightly faster than a human sprinter.


• 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.


• Ancient Egyptians believed that "Bast" was the mother of all cats on Earth. They also believed that cats were sacred animals.


• 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.


• Cardinal Richelieu was so fond of cats that he shared his home with 14 of them. Specially appointed attendants cared for them, and upon his death, the Cardinal left all his worldly wealth to his feline companions.


• 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 average 16 hours of sleep a day, more than any other mammal.


• 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.


• 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.


• Florence Nightingale owned more than 60 cats in her lifetime.


• 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.


• It is a common belief that cats are color blind; but recent studies have shown that cats can see blue, green, and red.


• Julius Caesar, Henri II, Charles XI, and Napoleon had aelurophobia, the fear of cats.


• Lucy Webb Hayes, wife of Rutherford Hayes, is the first person recorded to own a Siamese in the U.S.


• Many cats are unable to properly digest cow's milk. Milk and milk products give them diarrhea.


• Many of a cat's bones are found in its tail.


• 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.


• Nostradamus, the French Astrologer, 1503-1566, had a cat named Grimalkin.


• 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.


• Perhaps the oldest known female cat was Ma, from Devon, who was 34 when she died in 1957.


• 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.


• Siamese cats originated in Siam-modern day Thailand. Legend has it that they were the companions of kings and priests and that they guarded temples. Some trace Siamese origins to Egypt and Burma, but many dispute this idea. Siamese were first brought to England in the late 1800s.


• 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 is the only animal that walks on its claws, not the pads of its feet.


• The cat lover is an ailurophile, while a cat hater is an ailurophobe.


• The cat was domesticated over 4,000 years ago. Today's house cats are descended from wildcats in Africa and Europe.


• 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 giraffe, camel, and cat are the only animals that walk by both their left feet, then both their right feet when walking.


• The heaviest cat ever recorded weighed 46 lbs.


• The normal temperature of a cat is 101.5 degrees.


• 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 Persian cat has the longest and thickest fur of all domestic cats. The topcoat may be up to 5 inches long.


• 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.


• The red tabby cat is a Sarman.


• The silver tabby cat is a Teku.


• The Turkish Van, a very old rare breed that originated in Turkey, is quite different from other breeds because of its unusual love of water. Known as "the swimming cat," the Van is strong, quick and agile. He makes a devoted and loyal companion--on land or at sea.


• 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.


• Winston Churchill, adored cats. Churchill used to refer to his cat, "Jock", as his special assistant. "Jock" was reported to be on the bed with his master on the day the great British statesman died.


• 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.