Cat Talk and Body Language Tutorial
for Better Animal Communication

• Cats naturally use silent body language to communicate because it is safer to use in the wild than making sounds.

• Domestic cats have adapted to dealing with humans, who do not read cat body language well, by making approximately 20 different voice sounds.

• Cats have no ligaments. Muscles connect directly to bones. This is one reason cats are so fast, agile and flexible.

• Cats have more bones than a human. Human: 206 bones and approximately 640 skeletal muscles. Cats: 230 bones and 517 muscles.

• Cats walk like the giraffe and camel: the only animals that walk moving both left feet, then both right feet. See video.

• Cat fur has approximately 60,000 hairs per square inch on the back and twice that many on each square inch of the underside.

• Cat average litter size is 2 to 6 kittens after a gestation period of 62 to 65 days. One mother can give birth to more than 100 kittens in her lifetime.

• When a cat rubs up against you, the cat is marking you with it's scent and claiming ownership of you. Cats also mark, in the same way, many objects they like in the home.

• Three-quarters of the behavior problems with indoor cats is due to dirty and poorly maintained litter boxes.

• Milk can give some cats diarrhea. Don't feed kitty table scraps (or baby food) with salt, sugar, onion, garlic, or mushrooms.

• Flea control by the "spot on skin" type chemical can be injurious if instructions are not followed exactly. Using the dog type on a cat can be fatal.

• Cats eat grass to aid their digestion and to help them get rid of any fur in their stomachs. See How to Grow Wheatgrass for Kitty.

• Cats cannot taste sweets, many are lactose intolerant, and chocolate is highly toxic.

• Blue-eyed, white cats are often prone to deafness.

• Calico cats are almost always female.

• Cat whiskers are very specialized and sensitive large hairs with roots three times longer and deeper than normal hairs. They are used to navigate with agility in dark and narrow spaces.

• Cat teeth each have special nerve sensors for pressure control. This prevents their bone crushing jaw power from injuring their kittens when carried by their neck or head.

• Domestic cats have been clocked at speeds up to 30 mph (48 kph).

• Cats can stand on pavement that is up to 126 degrees F. (52 C.) while humans normally jump off at 111 F (44 C.).
  Also, cats' body temperature is 100.5 F. (38 C.) to 102.5F (39 C.). High compared to most animals, possibly because cats' ancestors were desert wildcats.

• A cat's heart beats twice as fast as a human heart, at 110 to 140 beats per minute.

• The domestic cat is the only cat species that can hold its tail vertically while walking. It is a body language sign that everything is OK.

• Cats can see six times better in the dark than humans.

• Cats' hearing is more sensitive than humans and dogs. (Notice that cats can hear some of the rat and mouse sounds well above human and dog range.)
  Approximate frequency range in Hertz (Hz) for some mammals:
  
  • human: 20Hz-21,000 Hz
    
  • dog: 67-45,000 Hz
    
  • cat: 45-64,000 Hz
    
  • rat: 200-76,000 Hz
    
  • mouse: 1,000-91,000 Hz

• The average cat spends 13 to 16 hours sleeping daily. The only animals sleeping more are the koala (22 hours), sloth (20 hours), and armadillo and opossum (19 hours).

• 40% of cats are ambidextrous (use either left or right front paw), 20% are right pawed, and 40% are left pawed.

• When walking, their claws do not touch the floor and therefore stay sharp.

• Average life for an indoor-only cat is 16 years, about twice as long as outdoor living cats.

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"When rats infest the Palace a lame cat is better than the swiftest horse."
-- Chinese Proverb