Info on cats. Taken from Tidbits of Rolla, October 31, 1996 edition

  • In a study, 18 kittens were raised in the company of rodents. Only three of these cats later on became rodent killers. The other 15 could not be induced to kill rodents even when they watched other cats doing it. They considered rodents family rather than prey. And the three rodent-killers refused to kill rodents of the same species they had been raised with.
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    There are 33 breeds of pedigree cats recognized by the Cat Fanciers' Association. Breeds of the domestic dog differ greatly in size, form, and shape. But in the domestic cat family, there is no equivalent of the Great Dane or Dachshund. The smallest full grown cat weighs three pounds; the largest about 18 pounds, for a differing factor of six. However, a St. Bernard can weigh 300 times as much as a Yorkshire terrier.
  • Crossbreed cats tend to live longer than purebread cats.
  • One study showed that neutered cats live an average of three years longer than unneutered ones.
  • The manx, a tailless cat, is not a true breed. The special characteristics of a true breed must hold true through many generations of breeding. Manx cats, when bred, almost always produce at least one kitten with a tail. Furthermore, a tailless kitten may show up occasionally in a litter of any breed of cat.
  • Attab was a Moslem general and contemporary of Mohammed who had a city named after him: Attabieh. Attabieh became a sector in Baghdad which was famous for its richly colored striped silk cloth, also named attabieh. The word was passed into many other languages as "attabi" and came to English as tabby. Cats with striped coats similar to the striped silk became known as tabby cats.
  • A male cat is called a tom cat because of a popular story published in 1760 called "The life and Adventures of a Cat." The hero of the story was named Tom.
  • The word cat in Spanish is gato, in German: katze, in French: chat, and in Arabic: kittah.
  • Cats trample your lap with their paws because when they were kittens drinking milk from their mother, that action stimulated the flow of the milk.
  • A cat rubs its head against things to "mark" them with its scent. Cats have scent glands in their forehead and around their mouths.
  • Napoleon, King Henry ]I[, Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, and Mussolini were all cat haters, perhaps because cats cannot be conquered. Brahms also hated cats and would sit at his window in Vienna and shoot at them with a bow and arrow.
  • In the 6th century B.C. the Persian army surrounded the Egyptian city of Memphis. Knowing that they thought of cats as sacred, the Persians began catapulting cats over the city walls. Horrified, the Egyptians surrendered rather than see more cats injured.
  • In the Kennedy White House, young Caroline and John John played with their cat named Tom Kitten. When he died, his obituary was run in the Washington DC paper.
  • Grace Patterson of Missouri died in 1978, leaving her entire estate, worth a quarter of a million, to her cat. Her instructions dictated that when the cat died, the rest of her estate was to be donated to humane societies.
  • It's been suggested by researchers that the reason a cat hisses is because it sounds surprisingly like a snake hissing. If a cat can cause a possible attacker to pause in confusion for a moment by giving the impression that it's venomous, it has an advantage.
  • Although having a black cat cross your path is bad luck in America, in other places it's considered good luck.
  • Not all cats bury their poop. In a study of feral cats, it was found that the dominant tom cat in the area will leave his poop unburied in a very prominent spot where every cat in the neighborhood will be aware of it.
  • A cat is said to have nine lives (rather than seven or ten) because nine is considered to be an especially lucky number, because it is a trio of trios.
  • The tiger has a weak sort of "one-way" purr but cannot purr like a domestic cat can, which purrs both inhaling and exhaling. However, domestic cats can't roar like the tiger can.
  • It has been shown that the more food a cat is given, the smaller its territory becomes. The territory of a male cat is generally ten times larger than that of the female.
  • Wild cats don't eat many birds. They prefer rodents. A study of feral cats showed that only four percent of their diet consisted of birds.
  • Cats are carnivores. They will become ill on an all-vegetarian diet.
  • If has been estimated that there are 12 homeless cats for every cat with a home.

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