Cat Facts and Trivia

Cats are amazing animals. They have become one of the most popular pets because of their independent nature, playfulness, affectionate personalities, and low-maintenance lifestyle. 

Enjoy these fun facts and trivia about your favorite feline:

~  A group of kittens is called a kindle and a group of cats is called a clowder.

~  A female cat is called a queen and a male cat is called a tom.

~  The at of giving birth in a cat is called queening.

~  Just as a person has a dominant hand, a cat usually uses one front paw more than the other. This has been associated with gender in felines. Most female cats are right pawed, and most males are left pawed. 

~ Cats have different nutrition requirements than dogs. Cats require some amino acids that are found only in meat. Dogs can be vegetarians, but not cats. Cats fed a dog food can become blind as a result of the nutritional deficiency, or can develop a severe heart disease called cardiomyopathy.

Cat Senses  

The  eyes of a cat can detect the smallest movements, even in very low light. Cats can see images in as little as one-fifth the amount of light that people and most animals need for seeing.

A cat's nose contains 200 million scent receptors, making it 40 times more powerful than a human's.

The cat's weakest sense is taste. People have about 10,000 taste buds on their tongue, but cats have less than 500.

Cats have very acute hearing, with the ability to hear the ultrasonic sounds made by small rodents (at 60 to 65 kilohertz), and they are able to determine the direction of the sound by using the 20 muscles in each ear to pinpoint the location.

A cat's fur is sensitive to air movement, with the whiskers being the most perceptive to the cat's movement. A blind cat will move its head side to side in order to use the whiskers similarly to the way in which a blind person uses a cane.

Cat History

The first know cat to be given a name, Bouhaki, appears in Egyptian drawings as early as 1950 B.C.

Cats were held in high esteem in Egypt and were treated with enormous respect. In ancient Egypt, cat owners shaved their eyebrows as a sign of mourning when one of their cats died. The crime of killing a cat was punishable by death.

In the 5th century B.B., as Persian soldiers attacked an Egyptian city, the soldiers carried live cats. The Egyptians chose to surrender rather than risk the lives of the beloved felines.

The Egyptian Mau, a short-haired, spotted cat, is one of the oldest cat breeds. The word "Mau" was the ancient Egyptian word for cat. It also meant "to see," or "to foretell."

Cats are one of the most popular pets, as evidenced by the many YouTube videos! 

Source:  Gagne, Tammy. "Amazing Cat Facts and Trivia." Chartwell Books. 2011

Visit our Fun Facts About Cats page for more interesting information about cats!