• Question: Why do people say cats have nine lives?

    Asked by WebsA1 to Dave, Ed, Guido, Hugh, Stef on 16 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Guido Bolognesi

      Guido Bolognesi answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      I thought they had 7 lives only!
      When did they gain two additional lives? Lucky them!

      However, in my opinion it is because they usually survive very dangerous situations. I heard several times about cats falling from a window of the first or second floor of a building and ending up only with minor injuries or no injury at all. So, the idea I think it is that they died and came back to life.

      Does it make sense?

    • Photo: Dave Bond

      Dave Bond answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      Well cats are quite lucky they seem to survive things that other animals do not.

      A cats terminal velocity, the maximum speed a cat can fall at is survivable for the cat. So even jumping out of a building it is possible for the cat to be un injured, assuming it falls far enough to reach terminal velocity. As the cat is no longer accelerating the cat relaxes, allowing it to land with a lower risk of breaking bones or death.

      This aided the saying that they have nine lives.

    • Photo: Ed Rial

      Ed Rial answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      Hi there

      Following on from Guido’s post it seems cats have different numbers of lives I different countries! It is only seven in Italy, Germany and Spain, and only six in Turkey!

      I will be honest I had to look that up!

      Ed

    • Photo: Hugh Harvey

      Hugh Harvey answered on 18 Mar 2015:

      Because cats seem to be lucky and can avoid life and death situations – like they always land on their feet if they fall

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