wish my cats knew they this:
one of my cats seems to find a way to fall off the table just by standing on it. My other cat knows how to fall down on purpose, but makes it look cute, like she wants a belly rub, like:“yeah, i meant to do that…”, yeah right. My cats are pure clutzs, and i’ve dropped mine (by accident)from just holding them in my arms and they have too much trouble just getting back UP their feet.
I don’t buy the whole cats ALWAYS land on their feet “legend” at all. Have they tried it with flying squirells?
The column (including three Slug Signorino illustrations) can also be found on pages 190-193 of Cecil Adams’ book “Triumph of the Straight Dope”.
I would imagine that cats, like humans, vary in their abilities, and maybe your cats are at the low end of the coordination scale? (No offense intended to your Fluffy.)
I don’t think that Cecil said cats always land on their feet, as a matter of fact he suggested that some cats may very well not survive high falls.
I would bet that the “exceptional” coordination and balance would be present to an even higher degree in a European wildcat or an African wildcat.
oh, i wasn’t disagreeing with Cecil at all, (by all means, how could i?)
i was just making reference to that quote of his, and almost poking fun of the issue itself. (its self? or itself?) Especially considering the clumsiness of my cats and all. They only survive the falls in my house because of the well padded carpet and vast amount of pillows and throws i have. 
There are really two separate issues. Do cats always land on their feet and do they get hurt. I can help with the first part.
A healthy cat should always land on their feet. I learned this from watching a PBS program (I can’t remember if it was National Geographic or NOVA or something else). A cat has some type of physiology in its internal ear area that helps it balance. When falling, this helps it balance itself feet down. The cat has to have enough of a distance between the height it is falling from and the ground to be able to get itself orientated. The program showed a cat falling off of a high shelf. The cat was falling towards the ground on it’s back. The program then used slow motion to show the cat twisting it’s body to get it’s feet closer to the ground. The cat does this in two steps. First, the head and front of the body is twisted feet down. Then, the rest of the body is twisted. At this point the cat is in a position to land feet first.
I would like to investigate the question of cats always surviving a fall.
In the case of soulsling’s cats, I would have a vet check the cats ears. If a cat has an ear infection or impacted ear wax, this may affect it’s balance.
I don’t know if I saw the same show as you did, in the program I saw there was one extra interesting fact…
There was a question as to how cats did the mid-air turn, since they have nothing to “push” off of. They were presuming:
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the cat had no warning before they got dropped, and couldn’t use some solid surface to get the turning momentum, and
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aerodynamic factors were not significant enough to account for spinning the cat around, at least not in the distance of a few feet.
Without one of these two things, it was a mystery as to how the cat got turned over, regardless of how many phases the movement was broken down into.
What they found was that the cat uses its tail, whipping it quickly in the opposite direction of the body turn. I don’t remember whether they re-tried the experiment with a bob-tailed cat. Might be an interesting follow-up.
As far as cats using their tails to “right” themselves, you should know that our cat does a pretty good job, despite having a paralyzed tail. Nt only can’t it help twist her around, it acts like a dead weight. I suspect telekinesis, myself.
i watched my cats today, and Comet, (thats the real clumsy one), jumped off of my dresser, and landed on all fours nicely, but when just walking on my coffee table, slipped and fell. it was too funny, i couldn’t help but laugh.
When i dropped her from my arms onto the couch, she twisted just like you described, but the couch is no example to see if she landed on all fours correctly, which she didn’t, she rolled into some pillows. As for the vet, that’s been checked, i was worried earlier on about that, but theyr’e fine. I think animals can have personality traits just like humans (which are animals…). So i think i just have clumsy cats. They’re from the same litter, so it could be genetic. Aries, (cat #2), is not so clumsy, but does the same thing as far as trying real catlike to be graceful walking around objects and over the table, then does this funny startled fall on her side and rights herself up quickly again. Hence my observation that they are just clutsy, and do not have “exceptional coordination and balance.”
is there any truth to the whiskers deal with balance? i remember hearing stories as a kid that if you cut a cats whiskers, it won’t have any balance. Haven’t tried it, and don’t intend to. Will search the archives though.
I had heard that whiskers weren’t for balance, but as a measuremnt device. You know how cats always seem to love tight, enclosed places? The reason that they never get stuck is that they (supposedly) never crawl into a hole that’s too narrow for their whiskers. In other words, if you cut a cat’s whiskers, it’ll walk/jump/fall just fine, but it might end up like Winnie the Pooh in Rabbit’s house.
The measurement thing is true. My neighbors cat got stuck between the wall and the couch just after their child clipped kitties’ whiskers.
I found the name of the video I was thinking about. It is a National Geographic Video titled Cats: Caressing the Tiger. The copyright on it is from 1991. I found it at my local library. It had some things on whiskers and falling.
With falling, the program said a cat usually lands on all fours and they always right themselves in a precise order. The cat adjusts by rotating it’s head first. It does this by getting information from it’s eyes and inner ear. Next, the spine twists. Then the rear quarters align. The cat then arches it’s back to reduce the force of impact.
Part of the segment on this was about High Rise Syndrome. This is the name for when a cat in a high rise building, jumps out an open window after a bird or an animal. They showed cats who were injured this way in NYC at the Animal Medical Center. They showed a cat who had fallen who had bone fractures. The Animal Medical Center found that cats falling from higher distances had less severe injuries than those having shorter falls. They explained this by saying that a longer fall allows the cat to attain free-fall and have a chance to relax it’s body. The body will suffer less injury if it is relaxed.
From this, I would say that cat’s do land on their feet, but they do get hurt.
The program said that the use of whiskers is not entirely understood. If the whiskers are severred, the cat can lose it’s equilibrium and stumble into things. The whiskers also give information about captured prey.
How do cats right themselves without something to push off? Conservation of angular momentum.
They make a quick whipping motion with part of their body, it creates an angular motion. Suddenly stopping that motion in one body part requires the rest of the body to respond to continue that angular motion, via angular momentum. Momentum is just the property of inertia - an object in motion keeps the same motion unless something acts on it to alter the motion. Angular momentum is that effect in a rotating motion.
Consider how people twist and turn off a diving board, and control their position. Sure they get a large boost from the jump to give the forward rolls, but they also generate twisting motions purely after leaving the board, by positioning their arms and legs, etc.
Same thing for cats. I think the tail whipping around is an effect rather than cause.