Mama cat and baby cut cat fight her servant
101 Amazing Cat Facts: Fun Trivia About Your Feline Friend
These fun facts about cats will make you feel all fuzzy inside.
You may love your cat, but you may not be fully aware of just how cool your she — and her overall species — really is. For example, did you know that cats have an extra organ that allows them to taste scents? Or that they developed meowing as a way to communicate exclusively with humans?
Clearly, there’s more to your little feline friend than meets the eye. So, to help you fully appreciate how awesome cats are, we asked cat care professionals on Care.com — namely, cat sitters, boarders, and groomers — to share their favorite fun facts about these mystical creatures. We then pulled together a list of the 101 most amusing cat facts that you can share with your friends and family.
Facts About Cat Anatomy & Physiology
A house cat’s genome is 95.6 percent tiger, and they share many behaviors with their jungle ancestors, says Layla Morgan Wilde, a cat behavior expert and the founder of Cat Wisdom 101. These behaviors include scent marking by scratching, prey play, prey stalking, pouncing, chinning, and urine marking.
Cats are believed to be the only mammals who don’t taste sweetness.
Cats are nearsighted, but their peripheral vision and night vision are much better than that of humans.
Cats are supposed to have 18 toes (five toes on each front paw; four toes on each back paw).
Cats can jump up to six times their length.
Cats’ claws all curve downward, which means that they can’t climb down trees head-first. Instead, they have to back down the trunk.
Cats’ collarbones don’t connect to their other bones, as these bones are buried in their shoulder muscles.
Cats have 230 bones, while humans only have 206.
Cats have an extra organ that allows them to taste scents on the air, which is why your cat stares at you with her mouth open from time to time.
Cats have whiskers on the backs of their front legs, as well.
Cats have nearly twice the amount of neurons in their cerebral cortex as dogs.
Cats have the largest eyes relative to their head size of any mammal.
Cats make very little noise when they walk around. The thick, soft pads on their paws allow them to sneak up on their prey — or you!
Cats’ rough tongues can lick a bone clean of any shred of meat.
Cats use their long tails to balance themselves when they’re jumping or walking along narrow ledges.
Cats use their whiskers to “feel” the world around them in an effort to determine which small spaces they can fit into. A cat’s whiskers are generally about the same width as its body. (This is why you should never, EVER cut their whiskers.)
Cats walk like camels and giraffes: They move both of their right feet first, then move both of their left feet. No other animals walk this way.
Male cats are more likely to be left-pawed, while female cats are more likely to be right-pawed.
Though cats can notice the fast movements of their prey, it often seems to them that slow-moving objects are actually stagnant.
Some cats are ambidextrous, but 40 percent are either left- or right-pawed.
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