FACTS ABOUT
DOMESTIC CATS
G'day folks,
Many of you will enjoy this post. The domestic cat is a small, typically furry, carnivorous mammal.
They are often called house cats when kept as indoor pets or simply cats
when there is no need to distinguish them from other felids and
felines.
Like their wild relatives, domestic cats are natural
hunters able to stalk prey and pounce with sharp claws and teeth.
Quick Facts
- Type: Mammal
- Diet: Carnivore
- Life span: Up to 20 years
- Size: 71 cm
- Weight: 2.3 to 9 kg
- Habitat: Urban and suburban areas
- Range: Worldwide
- Scientific name: Felis catus
Cats have been shown to have their own
individual personalities.
Cats enjoy acute hearing and can detect an
extremely broad range of frequencies. They can detect frequencies from 55 Hz up
to 79 kHz, a range of 10.5 octaves, which includes higher pitched sounds
than humans and even dogs can hear.
They are particularly effective
hunters at night, when their light-reflecting eyes allow them to see much
better than their prey.
Cats communicate by marking trees, fence
posts, or furniture with their claws or their urine. These scent posts inform
others of a cat’s home range.
Most cats are nimble and agile, and their
long tails aid their outstanding balance. The flexible tail has as many as 28
vertebrae.
Cats have a mobile backbone
that allows them to rotate the front half of the spine through an angle of 180
degrees in relation to their back half.
- The front paws are capable of a wide range of tasks from opening doors to pouncing on prey.
- The cat’s tongue has backwards-facing spines about 500 micrometres long, which are called papillae. These are quite rigid, as they contain keratin. These spines allow cats to groom themselves by licking their fur, with the rows of papillae acting like a hairbrush. Some cats, particularly longhaired cats, occasionally regurgitate hairballs of fur that have collected in their stomachs from grooming. These clumps of fur are usually sausage-shaped and about two to three centimeters long.
- Cats conserve energy by sleeping more than most animals, especially as they grow older. The daily duration of sleep varies, usually 12–16 hours, with 13–14 being the average. Some cats can sleep as much as 20 hours in a 24-hour period.
- During sleep cats experience short periods of rapid eye movement sleep accompanied by muscle twitches, which suggests that they are dreaming.
- Every time a cat awakes, it automatically stretches to flex every muscle and sinew to its fullest extent and restore circulation.
Domestic cats use many vocalizations for
communication, including purring, trilling, hissing, growling, snarling
and several different forms of meowing.
Their types of body language, including
position of ears and tail, relaxation of whole body, and kneading of paws, are
all indicators of mood. The tail and ears are particularly important social signals
in cats, with a raised tail acting as a friendly greeting. Tail raising also
indicates the cat’s position in the group’s social heirarchy, with
dominant individuals raising their tails less often than subordinate animals.
Nose-touching is also a common greeting and may be followed by social grooming,
which is solicited by one of the cats raising and tilting its head.
Cats are generally affectionate animals and
love being spoiled and petted, when they will roll and purr appreciatively.
Thoroughly contented cats will happily sleep alongside their owners, where they
enjoy the feeling of warmth and security.
It has been scientifically
proven that owning cats is good for our health and can decrease the occurrence
of high blood pressure and related illnesses.
Clancy's comment: They say you never own a cat. It owns you. And, if you want to find a cat in a house, just leave an open box out. Just sayin' ...
I'm ....
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