They say that cats leave paw prints on our hearts. Here are some pictures of cat paw prints. You will find that 90% of the pictures of cat paw prints are tattoos (on people). No doubt they are very popular. There is definitely a trend, a big trend, in getting a tattoo and paw prints make really nice ones. If you must and if you’d like to have a tattoo, I’d recommend paw prints. This page is about real paw prints and I have found some nice pictures.
We know that a cat is a digitigrade, walking on his toes. When a cat walks nealy all of his forward movement is propelled by his hind legs. The forelegs act like breaks when they make contact with the ground. The same applies when a cat trots. When a cat gallops his body is propelled forward by the power of both the hind legs pushing off at the same time. The whole body becomes airborne until the forelegs hit the ground.
The domestic cat has a floating shoulder. The forelimb is connected to the rest of the body by muscle. Unlike our collarbone which connects to the shoulder and breastbone the cats vestigial clavicle floats and it is anchored in place by muscle. This adds freedom of movement to the cat allowing him to lengthen his stride. This helps to make them superb sprinters capable of reaching 48 km/h or 30 mph in a few seconds. But the cat has poor endurance because he has relatively few fast-twitch fatigue-resistant cells. The cat’s body temperature rises after less than a minute of sprinting at which point he must stop.
The cheetah is the classic example of this restriction in distance when travelling quickly. The cheetah can travel incredibly quickly but only for a relatively short distance of about 400 meters before he overheats. They have to catch prey fast or them stop and give up.
On the subject of overheating, we know that the domestic cat sweats through his paws which is why you see the paw print in the first photograph on this page. Cats also lose heat by panting like dogs.
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