50 Interesting Facts About Cats

A cat named Toldo brought gifts of affection to his late owner's grave every day for months

27. A software developer outsourced his work to China paying someone else less than one-fifth of his six-figure salary to do his job. He used the free time mostly to surf the web and watch cat videos.

28. The US government commissioned teams of artists and scientists to devise ways to warn humans 10,000 in the future of buried radioactive waste. One suggestion was to breed cats whose fur changed color when exposed to radiation, then immortalize the cats in song and legend.

29. In 2008 the only female in a managerial position for the Japanese railway was a Cat. Station Officer "Tama the Cat" increased ridership by 17% and it is estimated that her publicity generated ¥1.1 billion to the local economy.

30. Cats "directly register", meaning that while walking, their back paws land in the same spot as their front paws, which minimizes noise and visible tracks.

H.P. Lovecraft wrote an entire essay on why he thought cats were better than dogs.

32. The protein that gives cats extra toes is named Sonic Hedgehog (SHH)

33. Unsinkable Sam during World War 2 survived the sinking of the Bismarck, switched sides to the Allies, then survived the sinking of both the HMS Cossack and the HMS Ark Royal. Unsinkable Sam is also a cat.

34. A convent of nuns in the Middle Ages began to meow like cats and others followed until all would meow together at a certain time for several hours together. This continued until the surrounding village called soldiers to force the nuns to stop their meowing.

35. J.C. Maxwell, the inventor of color photography and founder of the theory of electromagnetism, killed a lot of cats by throwing them out of windows to find the precise height from where the cat couldn't land on its feet anymore.

Ligers continue growing throughout their entire lives due to a genetic disorder called growth dysplasia. They grow twice the size of their Tiger mamas and Lion papas. The largest cat in the world is a 922lb Liger.

37. No species of cat can both purr and roar

38. In medieval times "Cat-burning" was an accepted practice thought to bring good luck. It was custom to burn a barrel full of live cats over a bonfire as people shrieked with laughter while they were sung and roasted. French Kings often witnessed it and even ceremoniously started the fire.

39. Cats with the top part of an ear cleanly cut off is a marking of a feral cat that has been trapped, neutered, and released to control population

40. Cats have a distinct temperature preference for their food, preferring food at around 38°C which is similar to that of a fresh kill and routinely rejecting food presented cold (which would signal to the cat that the "prey" is long dead and therefore possibly toxic or decomposing).

There is a parasite which breeds inside the guts of a cat. Their offspring are deposited in droppings and can then be eaten by rats. The offspring then affect the rats' behavior to make them less scared, and even sexually aroused, by cats, with the aim of returning to the cat guts

42. Cats don’t like to drink water if food is nearby. Moving your cat's water away from its food will help prevent kidney disease a very common condition in older cats.

43. The British government has a position called "Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office" that can only be given to a cat

44. The reason cats and snakes have vertical pupils is because it increases their depth perception while hunting at night while prey animals such as sheep have horizontal pupils so that they may have a panoramic view of their surroundings to watch for predators

45. When a cat brings back dead animals, it is actually acting out its natural role as mother and teacher. Human owners represent the cat's surrogate family and they are teaching us how to catch and eat prey, just as they would teach their young in the wild.

Medieval Pope Gregory IX considered cats to be the 'incarnation of Satan'. Leading to a mass killing of cats, causing the rat population to swell, quickening the spread of the Black Death (fifth paragraph)

47. Towser, a long-haired tortoiseshell female cat, is credited with killing an estimated 28,899 mice in 24 years of work as the resident pest control expert at Glenturret whiskey distillery in Scotland. Guinness Book of Records recognizes her tally as the world record.

48. Oscar the Cat who predicted when people in his nursing home were about to die with such accuracy that staff would call relatives.

49. An almost-invisible square meter sheet of graphene could be made into a hammock to hold the weight of a 4kg cat, despite weighing less than one of the cat's whiskers

50. A cat named Pudding saved his new owner's life just hours after his adoption. The Wisconsin resident originally had no intention of actually adopting one of the animals but had a strong attraction to Pudding who later that evening saved her from a diabetic seizure.