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Home / The Country

Five Things You Never Knew About Cats

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7 May, 2017 08:00 PM2 mins to read

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Think you know everything about your cat? Think again.

They don't always land on their feet
You always hear this about cats - but it's not always the case. While most cats do have gravity-defying capabilities (have you seen how they scale furniture?), a great landing isn't always a given. A solid landing depends on the height of the fall,
as well as how developed the cat is. A feline's ability to reorient its body during a fall (called the 'righting reflex') develops during kittenhood but isn't usually fully established until around 8 weeks old.

They can survive on sea water
If humans only drank sea water, it wouldn't take long for us to die of dehydration. Cats, on the other hand, have kidneys of steel that can filter out salt to become hydrated from seawater. This is a trait the rest of us could surely use.

They don't all hate water
Speaking of H2O, it's a common misconception all cats hate water. Sure, it's true lots of cats don't like it (and take it from us, you don't want to try it out on one of those guys), but plenty are actually fascinated by water and its magical properties. A dripping tap can often be a cat-magnet and some domestic breeds, like the Turkish Van, love getting amongst it. This is an ancestral trait, with ancient cats in the Lake Van region of Turkey known for taking dips in the lake during the extreme summer weather.

They don't have a sweet tooth
You might think your cat enjoys the sugary sweetness at the bottom of that yoghurt pot but actually the saccharine element means nothing to cats, who can't detect sweet-tasting things.

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They have crazy good hearing
What they lack in the ability to taste, they make up for with their ears. Cats have great hearing, largely due to the whopping 32 muscles in their ears (as opposed to the mere 6 we humans possess). This is just one of the reasons clever cats are quick-smart to react to the world around them.

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