Facts
PURRFACTS
Interesting Facts about Cats!
Did you know that :
Cats domesticated themselves around 4500 years ago!
Cats can pretzel their spine by 180 degrees!
Miacids were the earliest forebears of modern cats, around 61 million years ago!
Cats were glorified in Egypt as early as the 6th dynasty!
The grand daddy of all house cats is the African Wildcat (Felis Silvestris Lybica)!
In Pompeii, a woman was found who died in the lava while holding her pet cat in her arms!
Cats reach speeds of around 30 miles per hour!
Cats can jump about 5 times their height!
Cats can bear temperatures as high as 125 degrees Fahrenheit before registering discomfort!
Cats have 67 million scent-analyzing cells (humans have 5-20 million)!
Cats have 280 degrees of 3- Dimentional sight!
A cat's peripheral vision is sharper than its straight-ahead vision!
If human eye-to-face ratio were the same as a cat's, your eyes would be 8 inches across!
Catnip is a member of the mint family containing a chemical (nepetalactone) that triggers something in the scent glands that has a euphoric effect on cats!
Cats spend up to 50% of their awake time grooming themselves!
Egyptians called their cats: "Mau"!
A female cat can go in heat 3 times a year, and can have kittens just as often!
A cat has 500 muscles, while the much larger human only has 650!
In Japan, cats were held in such high esteem that they guarded precious manuscripts in pagodas, and for centuries ownership was restricted to members of Japanese nobility!
The word "CAT" in different languages: Cat, Chat, Katze, Kat, Gato, Qitt, Katos, Catus, Kadiz, Gatta!
Cats may have been domesticated as early as 6000 B.C. A cat's jawbone, dating back 8000 years, was found in Cyprus where no wild cats were native!
In ancient egypt, anyone who hurt his cat was punished by death!
The egyptians worshiped the cat and made her into a goddess: The benevolent goddess Bastet (the lady of life), wife to Ra (the sun god)!
Around 1200 A.D. superstition flourished, and for 450 years, the former goddess was demonized. She was tortured, hanged, burned, and stoned together with witches and heretics.
But this hunt was dreadfully avenged when the plague broke out, and there were not enough cats around to restrain the rats carrying the plague in the form of fleas!
New born kittens spend 90% of their time asleep. By the age of 3 to 4 weeks, they sleep 60% of the time, just like adults.
The first Cat Show (considered by modern standards) was held in 1871 at the Crystal Palace in London.
Feline hunting is NOT instinctive. Kittens born of nonhunting mothers or without littermates may never learn to hunt.
Cats brains need to process a constant flow of information and stimulation from their environments in order to stay active.EEG readings show that the cat's brains gradually shut down to
a basic body maintanance level, without storing thought or ideas. The most intelligent cats are those raised by people who
handle them, play with them, and provide a variety of stimuli for their amusement and growth.
