Yes, cats can walk on two legs but the quality of their walking (gait) must depend on which legs have been lost. On this page, there’s a video of a cat walking on two hind legs. Notably, the question refers to two legs but which two? This is an important factor to take into account. That said, based on observation, any combination of two remaining legs can be dealt with successfully to varying degrees by a domestic cat.
I have seen a cat walking on two side legs, two forelegs and as mentioned two hind legs. The hardest is to walk on two side legs. The cat’s amazing balance and innate strength makes it work but the cat’s stamina is substantially reduced because of the extra effort demanded. If cats had four legs but human muscles and balance, they couldn’t do it in my view.
Sarah Hartwell on her website tells us about a two-leg black Persian cat, Caffrey. He lost his left leg in 2003 when he was three-years-old. He had been run over by a car. His left forepaw was also injured in the accident but he managed nonetheless on three legs. At the end of 2012 his front left leg had to be amputated because of a malignant growth. This left him with two legs both of which were on his right side. His vet and colleagues thought that he would be unable to walk and have a very poor quality of life. They should not have been worried because within days after the operation he had achieved almost perfect balance and learned to trot and run on his remaining two limbs both on the same side. Quite amazing but very telling of the domestic cat’s athletic abilities.
Note: videos on this site are typically made by people other than me and held on YouTube servers or the servers of other businesses (not the server storing this website). Sometimes the videos are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. It that has happened I apologise but I have no control over it.
Three legged cats are not unusual but two legged cats are very rare. I suspect that a lot of the leg injuries requiring amputation are due to traffic accidents.
Domestic cats are amazingly adaptable. When a leg is lost the cat has to use their back muscles to keep their body up, off the ground. They achieve this by what I’d describe as ‘informal exercise’. They modify their gait and in doing so the back muscles are exercised to an extreme level. You can feel the stone hard muscles in their backs after years of informal exercise (more like hard training).
When not walking on two or three legs these cats rest their body on the ground rather than standing as you see in the video. My three legged cat (he had lost his right foreleg) would rest his stump on the ground and lean forward when resting during a walk. Also he’d take up the meerkat position very often. It came naturally to him as his back was so strong (see below).
I have a lot of admiration for the strength, tenacity, determination and acceptance of domestic cats who’ve suffered a traumatic injury to one or more legs. There is nothing more to say as far as I can tell.
SOME PAGES ON ‘DISABLED’ CATS – I don’t like using the word ‘disabled’. Let’s say challenged:
