A Collection of Kitty Trivia

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• The small patch of white fur on a cat's chest is known as a "locket".
• Cats are the sleepiest of all mammals. If you total up all the cat naps, your cat sleeps about 16 hours a day!
• Cats do walk differently from dogs! Cats, along with giraffes and camels, are the only animals with a gait in which front and hind legs move together first on one side, then on the other. Cats also are the only clawed creatures that walk on their claws rather than their paw pads.
• Cats are frequently born with six or more toes on one paw.
• Cats’ whiskers, so long and stiff, should never be trimmed. Cats use their whiskers to find their way in the dark, determine whether or not he/she can get into or out of a tight place, and a host of other navigation tasks.
• Cats can’t really see in the dark and their daytime vision is best described as “fair” – but they can see better than their human families in semidarkness. Their eyes don’t really shine in the dark, either. Cats’ eyes contain highly reflective cells that collect light from very dim sources. When you flash a light on a cat in the darkness, these reflective cells make it appear that their eyes are glowing. Long thought to be color-blind, recent studies indicate that cats can distinguish between some basic colors when these colors are paired.
• A cat’s hearing rates as one of the sharpest in all the animal kingdom. If you cat is always waiting for you at the door, the reason is that s/he can hear your footsteps from hundreds of feet away.
• A domestic cat has eighteen claws: five on each of its front paws and four on each of its back paws.
• People who own pets live longer, have less stress, and have fewer heart attacks.
• The average age for an indoor cat is 15 years, while the average age for an outdoor cat is only 3 to 5 years.
• The oldest cat on record was Puss, from England, who died in 1939 just one day after her 36th birthday.
• A cat's normal body temperature is 101.5 degrees. This is slightly warmer than a humans.
• A cat's eyes, whiskers, and ears will tell you what "mood" your cat is in.
• "Sociable" cats will follow you from room to room to monitor your activities throughout the day.
• 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 largest litter of kittens on record is 19, from a Burmese/Siamese cat in 1970.
• Kittens are born with both eyes and ears closed. When the eyes open, they are always blue at first. They change color over a period of months to the final eye color.
• Kitten's eyes usually open between 7 to 10 days after birth, but it occasionally they open within 2 or 3 days.
• Calico cats are almost always female. The gene in cats that causes the orange coat color is sexed linked, and is on the X sex chromosome. This gene may display orange or black. Thus, as female cat with two X chromosomes may have orange and black colors in its coat. A male, with only one X chromosome, can have only orange or black, not both.
• The color of the points in Siamese cats is heat related. Cool areas are darker.
• A cat's heart beats twice as fast as a human heart, at 110 to 140 beats per minute.
• Cats lack a true collarbone. Because of this lack, cats can generally squeeze their bodies through any space they can get their heads through. You may have seen a cat testing the size of an opening by careful measurement with the head.
• Scientific studies have compared and examined both a cat's brain and a dog's brain. The results established that the cat's brain is more similar to a humans than that of a dog.
  Cats wag their tails when it is in a stage of conflict. The cat wants to do two things at once, but each impulse blocks the other. For example: If your cat is in the doorway wanting to go outside, and you open the door to find it raining, the cat's tail will wag because of internal conflict. The cat wants to go outside, but doesn't want to go into the rain. Once the cat makes a decision and either returns to the house or leaves into the rain, the tail will immediately stop wagging.
• If your cat is near you, and her tail is quivering, this is the greatest expression of love your cat can give you. If her tail starts thrashing, her mood has changed and it's time to distance yourself from her.
• The domestic cat is the only species able to hold its tail vertically while walking. Wild cats hold their tail horizontally, or tucked between their legs while walking.
• An average cat has 1 to 8 kittens per litter, and 2 to 3 litters per year.
  During her productive life, one female cat could have more than 100 kittens.
• A single pair of cats and their kittens can produce as many as 420,000 kittens in just seven years. Please spay or neuter your pet.
• The smallest cat breed is the Singapura. Males weigh about six pounds while females weigh about four pounds.
• The heaviest domestic cat on record was a neutered male tabby named Himmy, weighing in at 46 lb. 15 ½ oz. (neck 15 in., waist 33 in., length 38 in.)
• The smallest domestic cat on record was a male blue point Himalayan-Persian cat named Tinker Toy, is just 2 ¾ in. tall and 7 ½ in. long.
• The smallest species of cat is native to Africa: the Black-Footed Cat (Felis Nigripes). Its top weight is 5.5 pounds which is considerably smaller than the average housecat.
• Cats can "read" your moods. If you're sad or stressed, you may also notice a difference in your cat's behavior.
• Cats knead with their paws when they're happy.
• A cat will almost never "meow" at another cat. This sound is reserved for humans.
• Cats do not think that they are little people. They think that we are big cats. This influences their behavior in many ways.
• Contrary to popular belief, the cat is a social animal. A pet cat will respond and answer to speech, and seems to enjoy human companionship.
• A cat's sense of smell is 14 times stronger than a human's.
• Besides their noses, cats can smell with something called the "Jacobson's organ", located in the upper surface of their mouths. This is what cats are using when they scrunch up their eyes and open their mouths after sniffing something intently.
• The nose pad of a cat is ridged in a pattern that is unique, just like the fingerprint of a human.
• A cat cannot see directly under its nose. This is why the cat cannot seem to find tidbits on the floor.
• Cats respond most readily to names that end in an "ee" sound.
• Cats have about 100 different vocalisation sounds. In comparison, dogs have about 10.
• A cats hearing is incredibly sharp. They can recognize their owners footsteps from hundreds of feet away.
• Cats are said to see color. Studies have been able to prove 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.
• Although cats can see in color, they are partially color-blind. They have the equivalency of human red/green color blindness. (Reds appear green and greens appear red; or shades thereof.)
• Whiskers tell a cat whether the space they are entering is big enough for it.
• The bottom two rows of whiskers on a cat can move independently of the top two rows.
• Cats are subject to gum disease and to dental caries. They should have their teeth cleaned by the vet or the cat dentist once a year.
• Cats with white fur and skin on their ears are very prone to sunburn. Frequent sunburns can lead to skin cancer. Many white cats need surgery to remove all or part of a cancerous ear. Preventive measures include sunscreen, or better, keeping the cat indoors.
• Cats can get tapeworms from eating fleas. These worms live inside the cat forever, or until they are removed with medication. They reproduce by shedding a link from the end of their long bodies. This link crawls out the cat's anus, and sheds hundreds of eggs. These eggs are ingested by flea larvae, and the cycles continues. Humans may get these tapeworms too, but only if they eat infected fleas. Cats with tapeworms should be dewormed by a veterinarian.
• The word cat in other languages: French = "chat", German = "katze", Spanish = "gato", Greek = "gata", Italian = "gatto", Japanese = "neko", and Arabic = "kitte".
• It has been scientifically proven that stroking a cat can lower one's blood pressure.
• To drink, a cat laps liquid from the underside of its tongue, rather than the top.
  Cats aren't hunters by nature - their mothers teach them to hunt.
• Cats only sweat from the pads of their paws. Ever notice how wet the examination room table gets when you take your cat to the vet?
• When well treated, a cat can live twenty or more years.
• People who are allergic to cats are actually allergic to cat saliva or to cat dander. If the resident cat is bathed regularly the allergic people tolerate it better.
• Studies now show that the allergen in cats is related to their scent glands.
• Cats have scent glands on their faces and at the base of their tails. Entire male cats generate the most scent. If this secretion from the scent glands is the allergen, allergic people should tolerate spayed female cats the best.
• Cats respond better to women than men. One reason this might be is that women have higher pitched voices which reminds cats of a mother cat calling her kittens.
• White paws on cats are referred to as gloves, but they are often called boots.
• The cat is one of nature's cleanest animals. Cats spend around 30% of their time grooming themselves.
• Because cats have an amazing sense of balance they rarely become ill when travelling by car.