Motion of a cat

Cats instinctively orient themselves so that they land feet first and their terminal velocity is slow enough to survive regardless of how far they fall.

And if you fix buttered toast to the back of a cat (butter side up) and drop it from a height it never reaches the ground. Did you know that?

Survive, yes. When he was younger the cat would climb up a tree and leap off playing Supercat. After I noticed him limping around for a week or two he is now much more conservative about jumping off things.

Cat grace is vastly overestimated.

I can fly in my dreams, so I'll just do that. Pretty sure dreams and usenet are the same sorta thing.

So we don't need to invent fusion reactors then? Connect that spinning cat to a turbine.

rbowman snipped-for-privacy@montana.com wrote

Bet that was because it couldnt get a grip on what he was jumping from.

Seen loads of videos like that. My cats had a big problem with empty boxes. They'd be sat on one and leap off. The box flew one way, they went the other, with less momentum than they'd calculated. Or even worse they'd jump onto the box and it didn't remain where it was.

They probably did something to them or threw them a certain way, because cats survive falling 32 storeys.

They have no grasp of friction or momentum, or things they're landing on are not fixed, or can break. When they jump onto badly made curtains that come down on top of them it's hilarious.

The cat sometimes naps on the edge of the deck, tries to roll over and falls off. If cats could talk he'd say 'You didn't see that' when he clambers back up.

My college magazine had a cartoon probably stolen from someplace. Two guys are standing on a bridge with one saying 'See I told you it would land on its feet'. The cat was indeed feet down under the bridge, with the leg bones protruding from the fur at the elbow joints.

Ours say "I meant to do that".

If cats could do magic, that's when they would use a memory charm on anyone who witnessed their fall.

This goes against every article I've read. Perhaps Chinese cats are weaker. They probably don't feed them well, especially if they're considering killing them.

Why did they do that anyway? I thought covid came from some other animal. I've only heard of one instance of a pet cat getting covid.

If you walked off, you'd rotate naturally, and so does the cat due to momentum. The cat needs to rotate itself to get the right way up again.

I'm sure they pushed them in some way (as the cat would have been fighting back), not the same as the cat gently slipping over the edge.

Would you like to give us a demonstration, CK? I'd like to see it in slow motion.

You can grip a tree with claws. I bet it sometimes tried it on a smooth surface and failed.

Maybe he was half wild, dogs that have cross bred with wolves are superior.

If you're jumping around you don't try to land on something you're not sure of.

Curtains can be weaker than trees. Ornaments even more so.

Looks like Garfield since he's orange. Garfield wasn't the brightest of cats.

Cats lie. The cat wanted to go out about 9PM last night and didn't show up until 6PM today for supper. We have a don't ask, don't tell policy. I suppose I could track him. We've got about a foot of snow so there are cat trails here and there.

In my less mellow days I was reading on a second floor back porch when the downstairs neighbor's cat got annoying. I put the cat in a paper grocery sack and dropped him off the porch.

The cat was back within two minutes and said 'That was fun. Can we do it again?' I gave up at that point.