1. THEY CAN BE ALLERGIC TO YOU.
Does your cat cough frequently? You might be to blame. According to a 2005 study, feline asthma—which affects one in 200 cats—is on the rise thanks to human lifestyle. Since cats are more frequently being kept indoors, they’re more susceptible to inflammation of their airways caused by cigarette smoke, dusty houses, human dandruff, pollen and some kinds of cat litters. And in rare cases, humans can even transmit illnesses like the flu to their pets.
2. THEY’RE NOT ALWAYS AFFECTED BY CATNIP.
In fact, half the cats in the world don't respond at all. Sensitivity to Nepeta cataria is inherited; cats with one catnip-sensitive parent have just a one-in-two chance of developing the sensitivity. If both parents have the sensitivity, however, the chances rise to three in four.
3. CATS CAN ACTUALLY LIVE WITH DOGS.
Forget what Peter Venkman said about cats and dogs living together causing mass hysteria. A2008 study by scientists at Tel Aviv University showed that if the animals are introduced while they're still young—six months for cats, and a year for dogs—they'll get along just fine.
4. DESPITE WHAT YOU'VE READ, YOUR CATS LIKE IT WHEN YOU PET THEM.
You might have read about a study that suggested cats get anxious when you pet them. But that was a misinterpretation. “As a matter of fact, the majority of the cats enjoyed being stroked,” study co-author Rupert Palme of the Institute of Medical Biochemistry at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, explained later. “Only those animals that did not actually like to be stroked, but nevertheless allowed it, were stressed." So go ahead, pet away!
5. CATS HAVE STRATEGIES FOR SHARING SPACE.
“We think we know about [domestic cats] because they are so familiar to us—living in our homes and being part of our families,” Professor Alan Wilson of Royal Veterinary Collegewrote on BBC.com. “In fact, we know less about some aspects of their behaviour than we do about many wild cats.” So in 2013, Wilson and a team of other scientists attached GPS trackers and cameras to 50 felines in Shamley Green, Surrey, for a BBC special. They found that the cats appeared to timeshare territory to avoid squabbles with other felines—though the cat-cams the kitties wore did capture a few fights.
6. A CAT'S BRAIN IS MORE COMPLEX THAN A DOG'S.
Sure, their brains are small, accounting for just 0.9 percent of their body mass. But according to Psychology Today, "the brains of cats have an amazing surface folding and a structure that is about 90 percent similar to ours." The cerebral cortex—the part of the brain that's responsible for cognitive information processing—is more complex in cats than in dogs, and cats have some 300 million neurons, as compared to 160 million in dogs. Some research does suggest that dogs are slightly smarter than cats, but cat owners might have a different opinion on that.
One more fun cat brain fact: The most sophisticated supercomputer in 2010 performed 83 times slower than a cat’s brain.
7. AND THEIR SHORT-TERM MEMORIES ARE PRETTY GOOD—UNDER THE RIGHT CIRCUMSTANCES.
Short-term memories typically fade away in about a minute, but in a study published inCurrent Biology in 2007, scientists determined that cats' short-term memory of certain things lasts 10 minutes. The scientists tested it by stopping cats after their forelegs, but not their hindlegs, had cleared an obstacle. They distracted the cat with food and then waited to see how long the cats would remember having stepped over the obstacle. The cats remembered for about 10 minutes and would bring their hind legs up where they remembered an obstacle, even if it had been removed.
But when cats saw the obstacle and were distracted before they had a chance to step over it with their forelegs, they didn't remember the obstacle, indicating their visual memory is not so great. "We've found that the long-lasting memory for guiding hind legs over an obstacle requires stepping of the forelegs over the obstacle," researcher Keir Pearson of the University of Alberta in Canada said. "The main surprise was how short lasting the visual memory on its own was—just a few seconds when animals were stopped before their forelegs stepped over the obstacle."
8. FERAL CATS WANDER FARTHER THAN FREE-ROAMING HOUSE CATS.
A two-year study conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois-Champaign tracked 42 cats with radio collars and showed that the feral cats traveled more than free-roaming house cats. One of the ferals, a mixed-breed male, had the largest range of the wild cats with 1351 acres; the mean distance for house cats was a mere 4.9 acres.
That same study found that feral cats were also more active than house cats, which spent 97 percent of their time sleeping or engaged in low levels of activity. A mere 3 percent of their time was spent engaged in high levels of activity, like running or stalking prey, while the feral cats were active 14 percent of the time. "The un-owned cats have to find food to survive, and their activity is significantly greater than the owned cats throughout the day and throughout the year, especially in winter," said Jeff Horn, a former graduate student in the department of natural resources and environmental sciences, who conducted the study for his master's thesis. "These un-owned cats have to search harder to find food to create the (body) heat that they need to survive."
Sign up here with your email
ConversionConversion EmoticonEmoticon