- A house cat’s genome is 95.6 per cent tiger, and they share many behaviours with their jungle ancestors, says Layla Morgan Wilde, a cat behaviour expert and the founder of Cat Wisdom 101. These behaviours 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 near-sighted, 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’ collar bones 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 in the air, which is why your cat stares at you with her mouth open from time to time.
- Cats also have whiskers on the backs of their front legs 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 per cent are either left- or right-pawed.
- Some cats can swim.
- There are cats who have more than 18 toes. These extra-digit felines are referred to as “polydactyls.”
