Category: Science

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Cat Trivia

Cat’s spend two-thirds of their lives sleeping. Then, a third of their waking hours are spent grooming.

Cat litter did not exist until 1947.

Cats are never mentioned in the Bible.

The oldest cat on record lived just short of 36 years.

Just over one out of every five homes in the United States, at 21 percent, has a cat.

The modern cat has been existence for about 12 million years.

Approximately one in five cats is lacking the gene that causes them to react to catnip.

Radiator anti-freeze, which can leak from cars is attractive to cats (and dogs), but it is highly toxic.

A mouser in Scotland killed 28,899 mice in her career.

A cat’s top speed which can be maintained for only a few seconds is 31 miles per hour (50 kph). They can maintain this speed for only a short time because they have very inadequate cooling systems. We can sweat, but all they can do is pant, or rest.

Cats have at least 60 million olfactory cells to detect odors. Humans have no more than 20 million olfactory cells.

A cat has an additional sensor in the roof of its mouth called the Jacobson’s organ that assists in detecting smells.

As you know geese gather in flocks, and lions in prides. What’s the technical name for a group of cats? A clowder. A group of kittens is a kindle.

Slow-motion video has proven that a cat will curl its tongue backward when drinking, forming a scoop on the underside of the tongue.

Not all cats are the same when it comes to human allergies, such as what former US President Bill Clinton suffered from. A human who is allergic to one cat, may be perfectly fine with another. Female cats tend to activate allergies less than male cats. A litter can easily have up to eight kittens. The record is 14 brothers and sisters in one litter.

A cat in Texas had 420 kittens.

If cats were criminals, you could identify them by their noseprints, which are as unique as human fingerprints.

A reader, Darryl, has sent the following information:

There is a very well documented case of a kitten that climbed the Matterhorn. A climber (it may have been Sir Edward Whymper) came across this apparently stray kitten when he started his climb and it followed him all the way to the summit.

You mentioned spraying perfume on cats to get them used to each other, and that reminds me of something people used to do here in England (including my mother). If people with a cat moved to another house, the first thing they’d do at their new home was to put butter on the cat’s front paws. This was supposed to prevent the cat from trying to return to its previous home, something that results in a lot of cats getting lost. I think the idea behind the practice was that as the cat licked the butter off, it would decide that a taste like this was worth staying around for.

Perhaps you could also mention the function of the reflecting layer that makes cats’ eyes glow at night. This layer – called the tapetum – is made of guanine crystals and it captures the light that’s already gone through the cat’s receptor cells and sends them back, giving the cells a ‘double dose’ of the light, which is why cats see so well in dim light.

April sent this idea along:

We have two cats in our house, and recently one of the cats has been urinating in the corner of a particular bedroom (even though we have two cat litter boxes in the house). We have found that putting a bowl of food in the corner eliminates the cat’s bad habit, since most animals won’t urinate near the same place they eat from.

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Surprising Truth About Cat Food

When you learn the surprising truth about commercial cat food, you’ll probably want to change your cat’s diet immediately.

Let’s start with some simple observations. When cats eat grass, what happens? Right, they regurgitate it.

The grass they eat doesn’t get digested. In fact they can’t digest grass. They aren’t designed appropriately. The intestine of animals who do eat grass is quite long. The intestine of a cat is very short. The cat is specially made to eat meat.

If you fed nothing but grass to your cat, and if the cat could actually keep it in, the cat wouldn’t be able to get enough nutrition.

That’s why they eat small animals. That’s what they are designed to eat. That’s where they get their nutrition. An outdoor cat eats mice, gofers, and the occasional bird, and they do just fine. They have done fine for thousands of years.

So it would be silly to feed them anything like grass, wouldn’t it?

Yet, most commercial dry cat food is composed mostly of grains like grass. Oh, it doesn’t look like grass, because the grains are ground up, and colored to look like meat. Then an artificial odor is added so the grain-based food smells attractive to cats.

Many older housecats suffer from arthritis, and urinary tract problems. Many cats of all ages suffer from intestinal problems, generally diarrhea. In time, many, maybe even most, die from these diseases. Guess what? These are the cats that eat dry commercial cat food.

If you simply switch to real meat, simulating a cat’s actual diet, these diseases are exceptionally rare.

Unfortunately, many commercial canned cat foods do not contain as much meat as you might like. And dog foods are often even worse, because dogs can get away with less protein than cats need. For best results, read the labels and try to find the most real cat food you can. If you have the time, the best bet is to make your own cat food from whole chickens and other small creatures.

But what about the cat’s teeth? Have you been led to believe that they need the dry food to keep their teeth clean? Have you ever wondered how a single bite or two on each morsel of dry food can actually clean a cat’s teeth? As you know, the cat doesn’t really chew the food up. The dry food doesn’t really do much for the cat’s teeth at all. Nature takes care of that. The cat’s teeth are designed to eat the way they do. The cat’s saliva has anti-bacterial qualities. The teeth don’t need any special attention beyond what nature already provides.

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Cat Population Growth

In ideal circumstances a pair of cats can result in 420,000 new cats in seven years. This assumes that each litter is large with an equal number of male and female cats, and that the cats breed as often as possible.

The average mother cat can have two litters a year and the average litter has four kittens.

So if unregulated, in one year, a pair of cats becomes ten cats.

In the second year, those ten cats turn into thirty.

Third year: ninety cats.

Fourth year: 270 cats.

Fifth year: 810 cats.

Sixth year: 2,430 cats.

Seventh year: 7,290 cats.

Eighth year: 21,870 cats.

Ninth year: 65,610 cats.

Tenth year: 196,000 cats.

Eleventh year: 590,490 cats.

Twelfth year: 1,771,470 cats.

That’s almost two million kitty cats. That’s more than we can adopt. That’s more than the shelters can handle. We don’t want them all starving. That’s why neutering is a good idea.

Contrary to popular belief, a female cat does not need to have at least one litter of kittens to maintain health. Furthermore, she will not miss having had kittens.

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Octopus, Cat of the Sea?

Perhaps the closest equivalent to a cat in the ocean is an octopus. They average around the same size as cats, they are known to be playful, they are carnivorous, and they are surprisingly intelligent.

Scientists have trained octopi to perform simple tasks. They have been observed pulling the stoppers out of bottles to get at the stuff inside, and even unscrewing jar lids.

Compared to a cat, the octopus is a weird animal. They have three hearts, all beating in their own rhythm, their blood is blue and they have little concern about losing arms, because they can just grow new ones. Their mental capacity, like cats, is centered in their brains, but each leg also has its own independent brain.

Some of the largest octopi live not in some remote deep part on the Indian Ocean, but in Puget Sound in the State of Washington, USA, where they have been found with armspans up to 30 feet (9.1 meters) long.

On some distant planet with large oceans, octopi may have evolved into the dominant species, in terms of intelligence. Could beings exist somewhere that are better able to communicate, more compassionate, and more successful than humans, that have eight flexible arms and live underwater?

Or, perhaps on some waterworld, their equivalent of octopi would be the pets of that’s world equivalent of humans.

This is a remarkably endearing and educational video. Mark Rober taught us many interesting facts about octopi. The plural can also also be octopuses. He did point out that their blue blood is copper-based, and that they have three hearts. What he didn’t mention is that all three hearts beat with independent rhythms. Among their many defenses, such as camouflage and squirting water out of their jet to swim away very quickly, is the ability to squirt a cloud of ink, thereby obscuring their view from enemies. The largest octopi, living off the coast of Washington State on the west coast of the United States, have been known to grow to beyond 30 feet across (9.1 meters) and weigh as much as 600 pounds (272 kg) Their eyes can be as big as 15 inches (38cm) in diameter.

Similarities:

Eyesight: Both have excellent vision adapted to their environments (cats for hunting, octopuses for detecting movement).

Flexible Bodies: Both can are highly flexible. Cats can twist and contort, while octopuses can squeeze through tiny spaces.

Whisker-Like Sensory Structures: Cats have whiskers, and octopuses have sensitive suckers that detect touch and texture.

Sharp Hunting Tools: Cats have claws, while octopuses have a sharp beak for catching prey.

Sensitive Skin: Both have highly sensitive skin that detects vibrations and temperature changes.

Fast Reflexes: Both react incredibly quickly to threats or prey.

Non-Verbal Communication: Both rely heavily on body language to communicate.

Behavioral & Psychological Similarities:

Intelligence: Both are highly intelligent and capable of problem-solving.

Curiosity: They explore and investigate new objects and environments.

Playfulness: Both enjoy playing, whether it’s with a toy or an object they find interesting.

Solitary Nature: While cats can be social, they often prefer alone time—similar to the mostly solitary octopus.

Ambush Predators: Both prefer sneaky, strategic hunting rather than chasing prey over long distances.

Love of Hiding Spots: Cats love small, enclosed spaces, and octopuses hide in dens.

Night Activity: Many cats are nocturnal or crepuscular, and many octopuses hunt at night.

Escape Artists: Both are notorious for escaping enclosures.

Social & Survival Similarities:

Independent Thinkers: Neither blindly follows orders; they make their own decisions.

Territorial Nature: Both are territorial and defend their space.

Stealthy Movement: They move silently when stalking prey or exploring.

Selective Eating Habits: Both can be picky about their food.

Short Lifespan (Relatively): While housecats live longer than octopuses, neither has an extremely long lifespan in the wild compared to other animals. See Lifespans for lifespans of other animals.

Masters of Observation: Both carefully watch their surroundings before making a move.

Affectionate in Unique Ways: Cats may rub against humans or knead, while octopuses sometimes reach out with their tentacles in a seemingly curious or affectionate manner.

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Cat Eyes

Kittens are born with their eyes closed. Only after they have lived several days, do their eyes open for the first time. Scientists discovered that if they put blindfolds on the kittens for the first three days their eyes are open, they will be blind for life. (I know, bad experiment! We don’t condone such experiments, but they did happen.) Evidently this time is important in the training of their brains’ sight interpretation capability. The blindfolded kittens’ eyes work fine, but their brains don’t know what to do with the pictures! Newborn kittens who lived in white boxes painted with horizontal black stripes could never learn to recognize vertical things during their entire lives. And those raised among vertical stripes could not see horizontal things.

Cats’ eyes are specially developed to see horizontal things much better. In ordinary lighting their irises open as vertical slits. Because the slits are narrow, focus on the horizontal plane is easy to maintain, but their ability to focus on objects vertically is reduced due to the relatively large opening vertically. Their retinas, like human retinas backed by several layers of nerve cells, analyze the picture before it is sent to the brain. The brain doesn’t just get a dot by dot representation, but rather an interpreted story from the retina. In the human eye, the signals of light hitting the retina pass through nine layers of synapses, with each layer potentially filtering or interpreting, before they make it to the optic nerve.

One fact relating to this interpretation is that a cat will see movement much more clearly than the detail of a still scene, as will a human. For instance, if your cat is not paying attention to you, wave your hand a little bit, and the cat will instantly look your way. All this makes sense for a cat’s survival. Their food moves in the grass and they have to see it right away. But the motionless grass and the rocks are of no significance. Most of a cat’s food moves across the ground – horizontally. This is why a cat can easily chase a ball that rolls on a table, but looses it when the ball falls to the floor. Watch a cat stalk a bird. They get closer, and closer, then suddenly the bird flies up into the air. Often the cat doesn’t even look up. To the cat, the bird simply vanished.

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Dreaming

It seems cats dream pretty much the way humans do. No doubt you’ve seen your cat moving his feet when sleeping as if running, perhaps sticking her tongue out as in drinking letting out a meow while sleeping. What’s the point of dreaming?

Have you ever tried to sell something big to someone, who tells you, “I’ll have to sleep on it.” There is validity to this technique. A person can enhance their decision making power while sleeping. This is done through dreams. It seems that while dreaming we are practicing our thinking skills, and more specifically, reprocessing our thoughts and activities of the previous day. We are able to see issues more clearly the next day, and therefore make better decisions, because we have new power. We have let our brain process the issue overnight. This is an essential trait to survival and probably as important to cats as it is to us.

For proof, we look at the spiny anteater, a simple mammal who does not have periods of rapid eye movement (REM) during sleep. This indicates that the little guy does not dream. The spiny anteater has another oddity. He has the biggest prefrontal cortex (the thinking part) in relation to the rest of his brain, of all animals except humans. Yet he is stupid, and we are not. Why? He has to process all his thoughts in actual time, as they are happening, because he cannot work things out while dreaming. This must be a bigger job than we would think. His offspring could not evolve much farther in intelligence because their brains would have to become prohibitively large. Instead, they evolved dreaming. We humans and our cats dream, so our large brains can be used for more intelligent pursuits. This dreaming business is very essential to the formation of permanent memories.

Do you wonder if the cat understands the difference between events that really happened and dreams?