What a bizarre conversation. The “side” with the doors on it is the front. It’s facing the camera. The side with the magnets and stuff is the side. It doesn’t have doors. So the cat isn’t pushing off any doors.
Ok, here’s the thing: what the heck do you guys mean by “alight” on top of something. The video you just showed has the cat grabbing the top of the shower door and pulling themselves over.
Watch it’s back legs. They are pushing off a seam on the unit. It’s rather undeniable so I don’t get this.
I absolutely get it. I assume the cat is always going to expend the optimum effort, like a human high jumper. So it will be a matter of finding just the right video of just the right circumstances and in addition one where we can observe the exact height.
In the interim, here is a caracal jumping 10 feet 
This is what I was responding to. Cats jump over or onto things of varying heights all the time without hooking their front claws and pulling themselves up. If it’s a height they can clear without doing that, they may or may not do it that way. You seem to be saying cats always finish a jump that way, even if it’s at a height they can clear. Is that not what you meant?
I have.
I haven’t seen most cats do it; but I’ve known a couple who could do a seven foot jump like that, at least while they were young cats. The ability reduces with age. – I don’t have any video, it was years ago. And they weren’t serval crosses, or unusually large; they were ordinary Domestic Short Hairs, otherwise known as ‘the cats we have around here’.
I obviously can’t trust your memory as we have people in this very thread not noticing a cat push with their back legs to finish a jump in a video they can rewatch and pause at their leisure.
True. Neither can I trust yours of never having seen a cat make such a jump. Either of us could be mistaken. And each of us has certainly been watching different cats.
My cite is a lack of videos on YouTube. Sometimes a lack of evidence is proof. For example, how could I prove to you that cats can’t speak english?
I agree with this in principle, given the amount of video filmed of cats.
However, the issue is that in practical household situations, cats are not usually presented with situations where they must make a clean jump, and hooking the front paws and scrambling is just easier when it’s possible. We either need an artificially designed situation like the plastic pipe arrangement upthread that forces a clean jump; or I’d also be convinced if I saw (say) a 7-foot jump using the grab-and-scramble technique that a 6-foot clean jump is likely within their capabilities.
This is what I see. Doors at the front facing the camera (freezer on top, fridge at bottom), magnets at the side, cat jumping up the side, cat’s hind legs bracing against the side, no black seam on the side. I don’t deny the cat is bracing against the side of the fridge, but it certainly isn’t pushing off from the top of the fridge door, it is nowhere near the door.
Sure, to be nice and scientific. But my counter would be that there’s also a buttload of cat videos that are totally set up and not “normal household”.
Well even if we call it “bracing” its not pure vertical leap. Could that cat have jumped onto a shelf that high? That’s the point of the pvc tube blocker to stop cats. They need that little scramble and grab to finish a high jump.
My current Siamese does it regularly. I have had other cats who did it as well. Come to think of it they were all Siamese…
Ok, sorry for three posting but ever since American Ninja Warrior, I think of cats as just being insane on the Warped Wall.
Please record it!
What makes you think a cat would give notice “hey, in 27 seconds, get your phone out to record. I’m going to jump to the top of that door yonder. I’ll wait til you’re ready.”
Not how cats work.
I guess that’s why there’s so few popular cat videos on the internet.
No one was presenting it as a pure vertical leap, we could all see the cat’s legs on the side of the fridge. The person you responded to, who posted the video, even says:
I think the issue here is that you are considering any kind of assist as “scrambling” or “scrabbling” while others consider scrambling and scrabbling to have an element of inelegance and implies some kind of struggle to achieve the jump. The cat in the video doesn’t struggle, it is an elegant jump that includes using the side of the fridge. If you feel that it doesn’t fulfil your requirement to jump without scrambling, that’s because your requirement was ambiguous.
Not that video but how do you “alight”* on top of a door without 6’ vertical leap?
*not trying to be a jerk here but I take the phrase as meaning to “lightly land” but I’m not sure that’s what earlier posters meant exactly.