Fun Cat Facts For Kids

This is a page full of fun cat facts for kids with a picture of some of the stars of these cat facts. The facts are about domestic and wild cats. Sometimes facts are not that certain. Kids should know that 🙂

• The world’s most popular companion animal (a pet) is the cat.
• We think there are about 500 million domestic, stray and feral cats in the world.
• The cat became a pet for the first time about 10,000 years ago. This happened in the area of the Mediterranean Sea.
• The world’s oldest cat door (cat flap) is about 400 years old and is a door in Exeter Cathedral in England, UK. Sir Issac Newton (1642-1727) who invented the theory of gravity did not invent the cat door (cat flap) because it was in Exeter before he was born!

• The world’s fattest domestic cat was Himmy who lived in Australia and weighed 46lb 15.25 oz.
• The world’s largest type (species) of cat in the world is the wild Siberian tiger (see picture). This tiger is also called the “Amur tiger” (Amur is an area of Russia). It lives in the cold of the east coast of Russia. The Siberian tiger can weigh up to about 800 pounds. That is 6 moms (mums) all together! The Siberian tiger is 400 times heavier than the smallest type of cat…..
• The world’s smallest species of cat is the rusty-spotted cat (see picture). They weigh a maximum of three and a half pounds (3 lbs and 7 ounces – about 1.6 kilograms).
• The world’s smallest type of domestic cat are miniature cats. They are rare and weigh about 4 pounds.
• The world’s first liliger was born in Siberia, Russia during the summer of 2012. The liliger has a mother who is a tiger/lion mix (liger) and a father who is a lion. The kitten is called “Kiara”. A domestic cat is raising her! See her in the picture.
• The world’s fastest animal on land is a cat, the cheetah. It can run at a top speed of about 64 miles per hour. People say 70 mph but this is probably wrong. They can only run fast for about 400 yards because they become too hot.
• The domestic cat can run at a top speed of about 30 miles per hour.
• The fastest breed of purely domestic cat is probably the Egyptian Mau. It comes from Egypt and has a loose flap of skin on its belly to help it run fast.
• The world’s largest cat in the world today (September 2012) is man made. He is Hercules (see him in the background in the picture on this page). He weights 900 pounds and is enormous. Man made means that people made sure a tiger and a lion mated to create a cub who was a mixture of a tiger and lion. When two different types of cat mate their cub can be larger than them. It is the way that nature works.
• The tiger bites harder than the lion.
• The tiger wins a lion versus tiger fight most times.
• The world’s largest living domestic cat today (September 2012) is Magic. She is a Savannah cat. Her father was a serval wild cat and her mother a domestic cat. She lives in California, USA. She is 17.1 inches tall to the shoulder. See the picture of her on this page.
• The world’s longest domestic cat is Stewie (September 2012). He is a Maine Coon cat. He lives in America. Maine Coons are known to be long and large.
• The Maine Coon is the world’s largest natural cat breed. In this instance, by “natural”,  I mean that people did not mate one breed with another.
• The three wild cats that are the best jumpers are the cougar (mountain lion or puma), serval and caracal. The serval can jump straight up to 10 feet. The puma has the ability to jump 20 feet straight up a cliff or make downhill leaps of 30-40 feet.
• The tiger is the best swimmer of all the cats. It can swim about 2 miles in sea it is believed.
• The country with the biggest number of domestic cats is America.
• One of the countries with the smallest number of domestic cats is Turkey.
• The country with the biggest number of feral cats is probably America. “Feral” means a domestic cat that has become wild.
• Cat’s eyes are 6 times more sensitive to light than ours. This allows the cat to hunt in the dark. But cats cannot see color as well as us.
• A cat’s nose is 20 times better than ours at smelling things. Cats depend on their noses a lot.
• A cat has 244 bones compared to a human who has 206. The difference is in the tail.
• Cats walk on their toes like ballet dancers. They are “digitigrades”.
• Domestic cats make about 23 different types of sound.
• The most common cat coat type is the tabby.
• The milk of a mom (mum) cat feeding her young has 8 times the amount of protein in it compared to a human mom’s milk. This is because cats are strict meat eaters when they grow up and meat is high in protein.
• The lion is probably the world’s laziest cat sleeping for 19 hours a day. The domestic cat sleeps for about 14 hours a day….zzzzzz

Photo credits:

• Picture of oldest cat flap: Photo: © Copyright Julian P Guffogg and licensed for reuse under a creative commons licence.
• Rusty-spotted cat picture by Joachim S. Müller
• Picture of cheetah running: Reproduced under the terms of a license granted by www.jstor.org
• Largest domestic cat (tallest under Guinness Records) picture is a screenshot from a video made by me with material from Kathrin Stucki.
• Siberian tiger picture: by ellenm1
• Cat’s eyes photo by Gyrus (Flickr).
• Liliger picture is a screenshot from a video. Fair use claimed.
• Background picture of Hercules is by Andy Garvin. See original photo.