"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way." - Mark Twain


Cat's are clever.

They've got that 'knowing' vibe about them.

They've also got some pretty amazing hidden talents.

In 1987, a paper in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association studied the cases of 132 cats that had fallen from New York apartments. The average height of the fall was about five and a half storeys and 90% of the precarious pussy cats survived. The range in injuries they suffered followed quite an interesting trend. As perhaps anticipated, the severity of the injuries rose in proportion to the number of storeys they fell. Up to the seventh floor. Above the seventh floor, the number and severity of the injuries to each cat dropped dramatically. So, as a rule, the further the cat falls, the better it's chances actually are.

There are records of cat's falling from more than 30 storeys without injury. In fact, one cat is noted as having survived a 46 storey fall. The record for moggy mettle, however, must be held by the poor pussy thrown 800 feet (244 metres) from a Cessna light aircraft, deliberately. Why some sick S.O.B thought this was a good idea, I don't know. Needless to say, this is not an experiment to be repeated.

As with a lot of small animals, cat's have a non-fatal terminal velocity. It's about 60mph. Once they relax a bit, get orientated and spread themselves out, they can parachute back to earth a bit like a flying squirrel.

Terminal velocity is the speed at which a body's weight equates to air resistance and it stops accelerating. This point occurs at around 120mph for humans and takes about 1,800 feet (550 metres) of free fall.

In 1944, Sergeant Nicholas Alkemade leaped from the tail of his burning Lancaster bomber and fell 19,000 feet (5800 metres). His fall was luckily broken by a pine tree and a well placed snow drift. He was found totally unharmed, nonchalantly smoking a cigarette.

Vesna Vulovic fell a whopping 34,777 feet (10,600 metres) when a terrorist bomb ripped apart her Yugoslavian Airlines DC-10 in 1972. She broke both legs and suffered some spinal damage but her life was saved by her seat and the toilet booth it was attached to.


Cat Facts:

• Both humans and cats have identical regions in the brain responsible for emotion.

• A cat's brain is more similar to man's brain than that of a dog.

• The cat's clavicle, or collarbone, does not connect with other bones but is buried in the muscles of the shoulder region. This lack of a functioning collarbone allows them to fit through any opening the size of their head.

• Cats have 32 muscles that control the outer ear (compared to humans, 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 amount of of light that a human does - it has a layer of extra reflecting cells which absorb light.

• Recent studies have shown that cats can see blue and green. There is disagreement as to whether they can see red.

• Blue-eyed, pure white cats are frequently deaf.

• Cats have a special scent organ located in the roof of their mouth, called the Jacobson's organ. It analyzes smells - and is the reason why you will sometimes see your cat "sneer" (called the flehmen response or flehming) when they encounter a strong odor.

• Cats purr at the same frequency as an idling diesel engine, about 26 cycles per second.

• Domestic cats purr both when inhaling and when exhaling.

• The cat's front paw has 5 toes, but the back paws have 4. Some cats are born with as many as 7 front toes and extra back toes (polydactl).

• Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway was one of the more famous lovers of polydactyl cats, after being first given a six-toed cat by a ship's captain. Upon Hemingway's death in 1961, his former home in Key West, Florida, became a museum and a home for his cats, and it currently houses approximately fifty descendants of his cats (about half of which are polydactyl). Because of his love for these animals, Hemingway cat, or simply Hemingway, is a slang term which has come to describe polydactyls.

• A domestic cat can sprint at about 31 miles per hour.

• Cat's urine glows under a black light.

• Cats lose almost as much fluid in the saliva while grooming themselves as they do through urination.

• The domestic cat is the only species able to hold its tail vertically while walking. You can also learn about your cat's present state of mind by observing the posture of his tail.