Cats that live together sometimes rub each others heads to show that they have no intention of fighting. Young cats do this more often, especially when they are excited.
A cat has the power to sometimes heal themselves by purring. A domestic cat's purr has a frequency of between 25 and 150 Hertz, which happens to be the frequency at which muscles and bones best grow and repair themselves.
Researchers believe the word “tabby” comes from Attabiyah, a neighborhood in Baghdad, Iraq. Tabbies got their name because their striped coats resembled the famous wavy patterns in the silk produced in this city.
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.
Purring does not always indicate that a cat is happy and healthy - some cats will purr loudly when they are terrified or in pain.
Cats lose almost as much fluid in the saliva while grooming themselves as they do through urination.
The most expensive cat was an Asian Leopard cat (ALC)-Domestic Shorthair (DSH) hybrid named Zeus. Zeus, who is 90% ALC and 10% DSH, has an asking price of £100,000 ($154,000).
A cat usually has about 12 whiskers on each side of its face.
In ancient Egypt, mummies were made of cats, and embalmed mice were placed with them in their tombs. In one ancient city, over 300,000 cat mummies were found.
Lions are the only cats that live in groups, called prides. Every female within the pride is usually related.
Cats have the largest eyes of any mammal.
Perhaps the most famous comic cat is the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. With the ability to disappear, this mysterious character embodies the magic and sorcery historically associated with cats.
Cats with long, lean bodies are more likely to be outgoing, and more protective and vocal than those with a stocky build.
Like humans, cats tend to favor one paw over another
In Japan, cats are thought to have the power to turn into super spirits when they die. This may be because according to the Buddhist religion, the body of the cat is the temporary resting place of very spiritual people.i
In the 1930s, two Russian biologists discovered that color change in Siamese kittens depend on their body temperature. Siamese cats carry albino genes that work only when the body temperature is above 98° F. If these kittens are left in a very warm room, their points won’t darken and they will stay a creamy white.
The ancestor of all domestic cats is the African Wild Cat which still exists today.
The group of words associated with cat (catt, cath, chat, katze) stem from the Latin catus, meaning domestic cat, as opposed to feles, or wild cat.
Many Egyptians worshipped the goddess Bast, who had a woman’s body and a cat’s head.
The claws on the cat’s back paws aren’t as sharp as the claws on the front paws because the claws in the back don’t retract and, consequently, become worn.
Some Siamese cats appear cross-eyed because the nerves from the left side of the brain go to mostly the right eye and the nerves from the right side of the brain go mostly to the left eye. This causes some double vision, which the cat tries to correct by “crossing” its eyes.
When a family cat died in ancient Egypt, family members would mourn by shaving off their eyebrows. They also held elaborate funerals during which they drank wine and beat their breasts. The cat was embalmed with a sculpted wooden mask and the tiny mummy was placed in the family tomb or in a pet cemetery with tiny mummies of mice.
A cat has approximately 60 to 80 million olfactory cells (a human has between 5 and 20 million).
A cat has more bones than a human; humans have 206, and the cat - 230.
A cat's appetite is the barometer of its health. Any cat that does not eat or drink for more than two days should be taken to a vet.