why say cats have 9 lives?

Factual Questions
1

How did the belief and saying that cats have 9 lives come about? This question popped into my mind only because I playfully told my cat Jet Jaguar that I would kill him if he kept waking me up in the morning and my wife laughed saying I’d have to do it nine times because he has 9 lives. (Maybe he’s a time lord?)

2

possibly because of a cat’s ability to often come out of dicey situations unscathed (or only mildly wounded). Plus there’s the “always” (yes, we’ve all seen or read about the experiment) landing on its feet. And the centuries of mysticism surrounding felines. Superstitious people have often attributed paranormal qualities to kitties

3

Googling gave me coolquiz.com - contact with domain owner | Epik.com which is more or less what I would have answered off the top of my head (they are natural acrobats).

4

I think the general idea is that cats, like all wild and semi-wild creatures, have a knack for surviving. If a cat jumps off the roof, or stays out all night with the coyotes, or takes a nap in the middle of the road, you’d expect any other animal to take it badly, but the cat just goes on. The only reason we notice it more with cats is that they’re the only semi-wild animal that most people have any contact with.

5

Other Google results:

  • It’s the ‘Trinity of trinities’ and therefore reflects their extraordinary good luck. Hmm.

  • It’s vaguely connected to the cat o’nine tales (also the origin of ‘has the cat got your tongue?’)

  • Nobody really knows.
    I’m going with the third option :wink:

6

Yes, but why nine lives, specifically, as opposed to, say, eight or ten lives? I’d guessed that it had to do with cats’ survival abilities–that was intuitively obvious to me. That’s the real question.

7

I found some possibilities here:

8

And the cat came back, they thought he was a goner, but the cat came back… tum de tum tum…

9

First you need to find out just when the first idea of cats/nine lives came about.

Then, decide what the significance of that number was.

The OED first cites it in print in English from 1562.

I think the number nine, whether in China or other countries, has always had a mystical importance. Can’t say why.