Bravo!
I agree with jjimm, this was painful and draining.
I’m not sure why you all seem to think that Blake is going to accept the cite provided by Desmostylus. He hasn’t accepted any other cites so far, but I must say that Desmostylus has offered up the best one yet.
Blake isn’t talking to Desmostylus until he apologizes. I’m not holding my breath.
But he has posted after the cite to end all cites without mentioning it, which to me seems like admitting defeat.
Wow, a four page Hijack! Kinda like Big Foot, you don’t see that everyday.
I am still trying to figure out why Demostylus should apologize. According to what I have found, fool is not an insult, rather an accurate description of the impression Blake gave, well worthy of GQ.
Somebody please correct me if I have missed anything. Thanks.
As for the OP, cat legs alone would not let you jump much higher. You would also need the rest of the cat’s body, or at least its spine, but then we consider just a big cat. This big cat would jump just as high as the cat you are used to, as we have learned from Blake’s cites (if nothing else).
You know- it does kinda depend on the meaning of “jump”. I THINK I see Blakes point- maybe?
OK, let’s take my cat. He is pretty athletic for a housecat. He stands about 12’ tall at the shoulder. But- when he stands on his hind legs and stretches out- his forepaws get about 3’ off the ground. He can easily do a ‘crouching" leap of 5’- I measured the height of the next to the top platform on the cat-tree. When he jumps- he stretches out his body as he does so. Thus, the actual HEIGHT gained JUST FROM THE JUMPING PART- is only around 2’. Note- he does this jump without “scramble”. You COULD say that he “jumped only 2’ and stretched 3’”- but it’d be “a stretch”! 
But then face it- he does a “jump” and he is now 5’ off the ground. That is a 5’ “jump” in any normal meaning of the word.
But I don’t think that is what Blakes cite meant. What the site meant is that weight increases as you get bigger, thus bigger animals jump ABOUT as high as smaller animals. This is true- as a “rule of thumb”. But then- hippos can’t jump much at all, and servals and kanga’s can jump higher than simply their size would indicate. But yes- the middle of the bell curve is around 2’ to a meter. What Blake doesn’t seem to understand is that is just that- the middle of the bell curve- the mean. Some do far less- a turtle- some do far more.
Note to whoever wanted to know the answer to the OP original question- it is contained in my earlier post. The answer is- less than a human could.
I think Blake’s mistake here was largely interpretative: he assumed that the statement “most animals cannot jump more than about a meter” is more precise than it really is. Most people would assume that the jumping ability of an animal is proportionate to its size, and therefore that the range of jumping abilities in animals is very large, varying from the mean by a hundredfold or even a thousandfold. To say, therefore, that “most animals cannot jump more than about a meter” when you really mean “animals’ jumping abilities can be represented on a bell curve with a range of 0 to 2.44 meters, peaking at 1 meter” is perfectly understandable, if somewhat imprecise.
Personally I have seen a cat jump over the foot of a bunk bed which was probably at least 5 feet tall. The foot of the bed consisted of vertical wood columns with considerable gaps in between them, so, had the cat relied on “scrambling,” he probably would have slipped and fallen to the ground. Now that alone should be evidence of a cat’s ability to jump considerably more than a meter, but naturally we run into the “anecdotes aren’t evidence” argument. But to use that argument here would be to misunderstand the nature of the argument and to commit a logical fallacy: for it only applies when we are trying to ascend to some higher, more theoretical principle than a single observation can provide. If we are merely trying to determine the nature of a single thing, or a class of things whose individuals are known to be identical in some respect, then only one observation (i.e., an anecdote) is necessary. Allow me to quote a leading authority on the subject:
This shouldn’t be a shattering revelation to anyone, considering that it was written nearly two-and-a-half millennia ago (Aristotle, Post. An., 88a 13-17), but apparently it is to some people.
Finally, Mangetout, if you still intend to conduct your experiment, I would be glad to see the results. I would have done the same with my own cats, but they are too lazy to jump for food. They just stare at me and meow until I drop it.
Damn. You guys have the patience of Job 
I would have given up on that Blake guy about two pages ago.
Oh yeah: I have personally witnessed my parents’ cat jump onto the top of the fridge (about six feet), plus onto a window sill that is of a similar height. They were simple, open-air jumps with no climbing or wierd flip-flopping or anything of that sort.
These days, he’s too old to make those kind of jumps, but back in the day he was capable of some spectacular leaps.
I know the time has now long passed… but I want to give it a shot…
The Guiness Book of World Records states that the highest freestyle dog jump was recorded to be 64 inches…
An interesting thread.
I would only like to add my anecdote:
I have a small shed off the side of my machine shop, long and narrow, with shelves on both sides. At the far end are shelves next to two upright freezers, with some horse blankets, boxes and other bits piled atop, leaving a very narrow gap toward the ceiling.
My cat, unnamed and referred to only as the “Emergency Backup Cat”, likes to lay on those blankets up near the roof as it’s soft and warm, and away from the other cat (the “Primary Cat”) with whom it does not get along.
It accesses the nest up there by jumping to the upper shelf between the freezers and the wall. Said shelf is 6’ 4" from the floor, 18" above the shelf below it, and faced only with a 2X4 (meaning the “scrabbling” surface is approximately 3-3/4" high.)
The shed, as noted, is long and narrow, with the passage between the left and right shelves being barely 32" wide.
The cat quite regularly hops up there precisely as has been mentioned before: It sits in the approximate center of the passage, crouches a bit, does it’s bum-wiggle, and launches. It does no “scrabbling” whatsoever, it simply lands on the upper shelf, then begins to make it’s way through the stored junk to the tops of the freezers.
I will be more than happy to show photos of the shelf, measurements, the cat emplaced and whatnot, though short of putting in a webcam and/or leaving a camcorder to run for a day or two, I’m sorry that I will not be able to show verifiable video.
Just for the record, the highest recorded “jump” by any type of animal was a mako shark which leaped/jumped 35 feet out of the ocean. The leap was captured on film.
possibly the longest (and coolest) post in the history of posts
your a [url=“Skull Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com”]bone head
[/quote]
just like any [url=“http://www.westonaprice.org/archive/archive_silverman.html”]skulled person who thinks that.
see my point?
I don’t see how calling Blake a fool had any bearrings on how high a cat could jump or would convince him of that. has “your a fool” ever convinced you of someone elses argument?
ugh lets try this again.
quote:Originally posted by MartinL
I am still trying to figure out why Demostylus should apologize. According to what I have found, fool is not an insult, rather an accurate description of the impression Blake gave, well worthy of GQ.
Somebody please correct me if I have missed anything. Thanks.
your a bone head just like any hard skulled person who thinks that.
see my point?
I don’t see how calling Blake a fool had any bearrings on how high a cat could jump or would convince him of that. has “your a fool” ever convinced you of someone elses argument?
I’d just like to add a small thought that came to me during my second glass of port after Christmas Dinner the other day;
Disallowing ‘anecdotal’ observations in this case (such as the apparent height to which a cat can jump) on the grounds that other, unrelated observations of a grossly different type (such as the apparent motion or shape of astronomical bodies) proved to be unreliable is itself, I believe, done at the expense of logical fallacies of Hasty Generalisation and possibly also False Analogy.
Interesting, but I don’t think either camp in this sorry saga would want to include that in their standard definition of ‘jump’ (at least in as far as this thread is concerned), as it most likely invloved quite a ‘run-up’ underwater.
I don’t know - sometimes it’s helpful to point out the blatantly obvious. A fool certainly would not realize he is a fool unless some helpful person pointed it out.
That Blake fella just likes to argue. It’s amazing the dude wanted to argue for 4 pages that cats or whatever animal can’t jump high.
I only think my cat can jump on the fridge because people once thought the sun revolved around the earth! Or whatever his point was.
Blake?
::crickets:::
Would also like to take this opportunity to note that Desmostylus rules.
I like the irony of that. Motion being relative and all, from the frame of referance of the earth the sun does orbit the earth once a day.