Eight lives left

[petewood]

This morning I walked into our bedroom to see one of our pair of 6-month old cats walking on the outside window-ledge. This gave me a shock as this ledge is only about 4" wide and sloping, and there is a big drop onto a stone patio. I walked slowly towards the open window and called the cat. It turned round and started walking back towards the opening, but 1/2 way back it lay down and started rolling round on it's back, as cats do.

Then it fell off.

I ran to the window and looked down and realised that it had missed the patio and fallen even further, and was lying on our cellar steps.

I called my wife and we both rushed outside but the cat had vanished; presumably it had run into the cellar as the door had been left open. We searched all over but the cellar is quite large and so full of junk that there are too many places where she could have hidden.

We had our breakfast worrying that it had crawled away to die or that it had broken bones at least. Thirty minutes later the cat walked into the house and sat down on a chair and although it looked as bit stressed at the time it seems ok now.

I stuck a tape measure out of the window and measured 17' (5.2 metres) to where the cat had fallen onto the concrete steps. Lucky or what?

 

[breezer]

aparently cats can do this with no harm (although i am not sure about from THAT height) i have seen it on tv, they spin over and land on all 4 legs.

even so it must hurt

 

[joe-90]

There have been cases of cats falling off tower blocks and surviving. Apparently the air catches in their underneath cavity and works like a parachute.

joe

 

[Steve]

i suppose you can liken it to how high cats can jump - it always amazes me to see how high they jump, so they must have very strong leg muscles and this takes some of the force when they land when they bend their legs.

 

[JulieL]

On Friday I startled our cat Henry when I walked into the bedroom
he ran and jumped through the banister on the landing and landed about 3 stairs from the bottom of the staircase and then ran straight through the cat flap like a bat out of hell!!!........I was really worried in case he landed on the large lump (tumour) on his side - but when he came in about an hour later he appeared to be none the worse for his experience.........!!

 

[andy]

my cats had a few near misses... altho he always get out OK. my dads cat once fell out of an upstairs window, by the time we got there he was ontop of a 7ft wall to get to the back door!

 

[ellal]

Drop a cat and it always lands on its feet..

Drop a piece of toast and it lands butter side down...

what happens if you tie a piece of toast on a cat's back, butter side up?...

 

[masona]

aparently cats can do this with no harm (although i am not sure about from THAT height) i have seen it on tv, they spin over and land on all 4 legs.

I have read it in a book that they can land on all 4 legs from 4" high upside down!

Last year on Boxing day my wife heard lot of cat crying noise in the kitchen and found the cat fell behind the oven housing at the top (now a wire mesh now covering a small gap!) and removed the plinth on the bottom, out come the cat, not a care in the world!

 

[Big_Spark]

Many years ago I lived in a third floor flat..my Cat used to jump at the birds on a regualr basis..always ending up on the ground below..never did itself any harm whatsoever...

He died peacefull of old age after several hundred such nose dives off the balcony...he caught a bird on several occasions though...Just wish he hadn't brought it back to the flat..

 

[ban-all-sheds]

I saw a cat pull the most amazing stunt once.

I was walking along the high street of a small town, and a cat came hurtling out of a driveway or alleyway into the road, and right into the path of a car.

It jumped up, twisted in mid-air, hit the front n/s wing of the car with all four feet and a resounding thump, pushed/bounced/fell back, twisted again, landed on the ground and shot back into the driveway.

The poor driver, who'd slammed on his brakes and would have seen the cat, heard and felt the thump, but seen nothing else, was now out of his car looking for the mangled moggy, so I went and explained.

Whether this was something the cat had made up as it went along, or a procedure well practiced and honed I shall never know....

 

[masona]

They're amazing animal, my friend whose cat got run over by a car and shattered all the bottom half of the bones in the body, taken it to the vet to have it put down, the vet said the bones will grow back again. Well, the vet kept the cat in for 5-6 weeks, the cat was running around again! I've not heard of this as the vet said this is why they have 9 lives

 

[empip]

Vet meant twill take 9 lifetimes to pay his 6 wk bill for full board and 24 hr care ... 168 hrs per wk x 6 = 1008 hrs at £125 per hr to inc medication, nursing and specialist treatments = kerching ! £125,000 .. And you cannot even recognise the cat .. it was black wasn't it ?
divide by 9 = £14,000 per life.

 

[David E]

Found thisarticle about buttered toast and cats

http://www.begent.org/toast.htm

 

[empip]

If it doesn't work, and cat is mashed, just add two pieces of bread and eat the thing.

 

[AdamW]

I saw on TV that cat front legs are attached to the rest of their skeleton by tendons, not by bone-joints! This acts like a shock-absorber.

They also have the mid-air-twist trick, and their terminal velocity is supposedly quite low (perhaps the parachute-trick mentioned earlier?). There is some story, possibly apocryphal, that you can drop a cat from any height above the 7th story of a tower-block, even out of a plane, and it will usually survive. Do a search for "cat terminal velocity" and there are many websites on this.

Your cat was rather lucky though, 17-feet is quite a way! My friend's cat fell out of a tree earlier in the year and managed to smash one of his hips. The vet performed an operation where he basically removed the damaged part of the pelvis and thigh-bone, and the cat now walks (albeit with a gangster-limp) but with the back leg "joint" made only of muscle. Presumably he got bumped around in the tree and landed awkwardly.