Facts &
Trivia
- Both humans and cats
have identical regions in the brain responsible
for emotion.
- Cats' hearing is much
more sensitive than humans and dogs.
- Cats' hearing stops at
65 khz; humans' hearing stops at 20 khz
- Cats have 32 muscles
that control the outer ear (compared to human's
6 muscles each). A cat can rotate its ears independently 180
degrees,
and can turn in the direction of sound 10 times faster than
those of
the best watchdog.
- A cat sees about 6
times better than a human at night, and needs 1/6
the amounto of light that a human does - it has a layer of
extra
reflecting cells which absorb light.
- A cat's field of
vision is about 185 degrees.
- Blue-eyed, white cats
are often deaf.
- A cat has approximtely
60 to 80 million olfactory cells (a human
has between 5 and 20 million).
- A cat has a total of
24 whiskers, 4 rows of whiskers on each side. The
upper two rows can move independently of the bottom two rows. A
cat
uses its whiskers for measuring distances.
- Cats purr at the same
frequency as an idling diesel engine, about 26
cycles per second.
- A domestic cat can
sprint at about 31 miles per hour.
- Cat's urine glows
under a black light.
- Almost 10% of a cat's
bones are in its tail, and the tail is used to
maintain balance.
- If a cat is
frightened, the hair stands up fairly evenly all over the
body; when the cat threatens or is ready to attack, the hair
stands
up only in a narrow band along the spine and
tail.
- Not every cat gets
"high" from catnip. If the cat doesn't have a specific
gene, it won't react (about 20% do not have the gene). Catnip
is
non-addictive.
- Cats must have fat in
their diet because they can't produce it on
their own.
- While many cats enjoy
milk, it will give some cats diarrhea.
- A cat will spend
nearly 30% of her life grooming herself.
- When a domestic cat
goes after mice, about 1 pounce in 3 results in
a catch.
- Mature cats with no
health problems are in deep sleep 15 percent
of their lives. They are in light sleep 50 percent of the time.
That
leaves just 35 percent awake time, or roughly 6-8 hours a day.
Cats
come back to full alertness faster than any other
creature.
- A cat can jump 5 times
as high as it is tall.
- In 1987, cats overtook
dogs as the number one pet in America (about
50 million cats resided in 24 million homes in
1986).
- About 37% of American
homes today have at least 1 cat.
- The first true cats
came into existence about 12 million years ago.
- Ancient Egyptian
family members shaved their eyebrows in mourning
when the family cat died.
- The Pilgrims were the
first to introduce cats to North America.
- The Maine Coon cat is
America's only natural breed of domestic feline.
It is 4 to 5 times larger than the Singapura, the smallest
breed of cat.
- •There are
approximately 100 breeds of cat.
